ABSTRACT
Rwenzururu was at once a struggle, a collective horizon and a way of life, an identity. Among the expressions of social and emotional involvement it thus aroused, songs constituted a popular and powerful medium to share feelings, memories, solidarities. This chapter sets out to do just that, examining a repertory of songs of the Rwenzururu movement. It will be concerned with their different uses as instruments of collective identity, as repositories of history and vehicles of exhortation, as well as with their origins in time and space. The chapter thus seeks to illuminate an important and hitherto underexposed dimension of the movement; among other things it will try to account for the expression of often strongly contrasting moods, viewpoints and styles in Rwenzururu songs. The songs that emerged in the Rwenzururu movement form an oral record of the hopes, frustrations, purposes and confusions generated by the conflict.
