MoRoots Is Redefining The Soundscape of African Music 

MoRoots’ background in classical music wouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone who’s heard her songs. Embodied with grace and tact that’s a result of her long tinkering with musical structure, she has demonstrated a rich vein of artistry across her decade-long career as a live music performer and recording artist. “Tulo,” for which she’s putting out the video this Friday, shines with a similar range and attentiveness. 

“It’s one of the songs from my EP called ROOTED,” she said in a recent interview with Culture Custodian. “[The project] is about exploring themes from traditional Ugandan music, but through this very futuristic lens. So all the songs are rooted in a local traditional music idea that always feels familiar and nostalgic. With ‘Tulo,’ the chorus is actually a popular Ugandan lullaby, which most mothers in central Uganda sing that song as a lullaby to their kids. It’s a story about the strength of motherhood”. 

True to her words, there’s a poignant sense of care and caress which trails the record. Backed by an irregular drum pattern and subtle strings, one is drawn into a world that is as familiar as it is strange, with MoRoots advancing the theme of motherhood into a message that sounds directed at the world, with all its recent recklessness and danger. But of course, what pulls you in now is the visual accompaniment given to her piercing vocals, whose principal tone of red gives credence to the above suggestions. 

“It needs to be a soundtrack,” she laughs when I suggest that it would have fit on Ryan Coogler’s groundbreaking Sinners movie. For the video, MoRoots enlisted Kamanze, a Ugandan director who rose to her challenge of shooting a series of videos in two days due to the limited availability of MoRoots, who’s partly based in London. After the task was established, next were the technical aspects. “We had this idea of centering the videos around colors, and for ‘Tulo’ that is red. Then we thought about shots, shadows, lighting, what were the kind of things that we wanted to represent. Then we thought about the space we want to be in, then the performance itself. We shot three videos in one day, and this was one of them”. 

Quite obviously, MoRoots revels in getting hands-on with her projects. She speaks with that hard-won experience that’s a result of this intimate creativity, and this goes way back to the beginning. According to her, she started music “from a very young age,” getting a classical training in piano and a bit of saxophone, which she picked up in primary school. 

In her UK-based university, she dabbled with music societies and upon returning to Uganda, she got involved with one of the biggest bands around,  Kwela. That was around 2012, and she held the forte for about five years. “My context was largely live music, where I would sing and I would play the saxophone,” she explains, “and then at some point through that process, I started writing, and I recorded my first song probably in 2013, and I continued to write ‘cos a lot of the songs I would write were being performed and then I did my first solo album From The Sun around 2016”.

MoRoots understands her music—soulful, funky, jazz-inspired—can be considered niche, but through her live performances she built up a community, who were eager to hear her recorded stuff. “I think it’s a combination of people wanting to experience you beyond a Friday evening at this place, or beyond watching you play at a festival, and they got the opportunity to do that,” she says. “But then also, I didn’t want to feel dependent on people listening to my songs, and I like the balance of if you really want to experience me and my sound in my full power, you may need to find me in person. I quite like that idea, and I think it defines why I took very long to put together my first album”. 

For the observer of contemporary African music, it’s likely that East African musicians (and especially women) are some of the best visionaries you’ll find across the scene. With a fine handle on traditional forms and aesthetics, and using modern sensibilities from soul and R&B to touch on the human condition, artists like Elsy Wameyo and Xenia Mannesseh have contributed brilliantly to our soundscape. MoRoots belongs to that conversation, a creative powerhouse who’s still growing into the fullness of her powers. When asked about why the region seems to favor a love-led perspective in its music, her answer was typically illuminating. 

“I would say Ugandans are lovers, and also they’re relaxed,” she says. “If you hear the average tempo of the music that Uganda makes, it’s swaying music, it’s music where you hold each other. It’s sensual, a lot of that, because I think even just as people, we’re very loving, inviting, communal, but also there’s that element of ‘it’s never that serious, let’s be in the moment,’ we’re not rushing to go anywhere. I think that mindset and way of being improbably influences to a certain degree why we like R&B, why we like reggae, and some of the genres we do”. 

Listening to MoRoots, it’s evident how well-tuned her artistic antenna is. Tulo would no doubt pull you into her world, but when you go back to hear what she’s made prior, there’s an even deeper sense of impressiveness that garners. As she tells us, she’ll be putting out more music and videos throughout the year. “But beyond that, I would love to spend it connecting, collaborating, thinking about what the next project is gonna be”.