ABSTRACT
Since the 1950s dawn of Uganda’s popular music era, three modes of musical humor have risen to prominence: a dense, enigmatic verbal humor rooted in bardic traditions; a “situation comedy” humor performed by ensemble casts; and, most recently, a humor of jokes crafted for potentially global circulation. Beginning with a consideration of musical comedy precedents in the region’s pre-colonial kingdoms, this chapter sets these three modes in their successive historical contexts, examining them as responses to repressive colonial language policy, the collapse of civil society under Idi Amin’s tyrannical regime, and the rise of digitally mediated, corporate sponsored, global circuits of celebrity.
