Digital Indigenous 08: Aliyuyo Uyoo

This is the eighth release in 1000HZ Records’ Digital Indigenous series featuring local producers who use rudimentary digital tools to create mixes of electronic and traditional music. Bonnie Lulenga is a Hehe farmer from Kisinga village in the Iringa region of Tanzania. He also works as a musician and makes his own instruments from local materials like metal wire, planks of wood and buckets. In 2015, he began performing at cultural centres using his instruments: drums, whistles, ankle bells, cowbells and even a harmonica. Hehe music revolves around songs that feature drums, singing and dancing; he has taken the music and developed a repertoire of six different styles. A string bass sound, accompanied by drums and different bells, drives the catchy rhythms of his music, captured perfectly on songs like the opener ‘Kileka Mkwawa (What Mkwawa Left Us)’, which tells the story of the Hehe leader Mkwawa who led a guerrilla war against German colonisers in the 19th century.