Trucking Through Africa: A Mobile Music Lab as Gateway to the World

The project showcased by the Kisoboka concert dates all the way back to 2021, when Lab Uganda – a lorry turned music laboratory – set off from Munich’s Gasteig for BidiBidi in Uganda. With an area of around 250 square kilometres, BidiBidi is the world’s second-largest refugee settlement and home to mainly women and children from South Sudan, who live there in extremely challenging conditions. Housing a recording studio and donated instruments, the mobile music lab offers the settlement’s residents an opportunity to find new perspectives and opportunities through music. The project was made possible by volunteers from the small Munich-based Music Connects charity in collaboration with Brass for Africa. In addition to music lessons, the local organisation in Uganda provides disadvantaged children and youngsters with life skills and health education.

Music creates perspectives

“Those arriving in BidiBidi are mostly traumatised refugees from crisis-hit regions. Music provides relief, for children and adults alike,” says Verena-Maria Fitz of Music Connects. A violinist in the Bavarian State Orchestra, she has visited the settlement herself. “From the very first note, everyone plays together. This strengthens the sense of community, gets friends and family involved, and that gives rise to a huge movement.”

A great deal has indeed been achieved since the project’s inception: donated instruments have been collected, repaired and shipped, and Gasteig staff have travelled to East Africa to share their technical expertise. On many occasions, it was necessary to seek and hope for donations. Musicians from Uganda visited the Gasteig HP8 for work placements and performances. A summer concert was streamed live to the refugee settlement, allowing everyone to celebrate together across continents. To date, the Lab Uganda mobile music lab has reached more than 250,000 people in one of the most remote parts of the world.

A truck turned gateway to the world: Beyond its function as a performance stage and recording studio, the lorry serves as a central hub for raising awareness of important issues, such as hygiene and health as well as peace education. Music lessons as well as training in sound engineering and instrument repair pave the way to careers in music and concert tours to other countries. The Kisoboka concert in the Isarphilharmonie is an inspiring milestone that demonstrates how a small idea can grow into something extraordinary when people join forces to achieve a common aim.

A musical encounter

On 26 July, musicians from Brass for Africa and Attacca – the Bavarian State Opera’s youth orchestra – will perform together at the Isarphilharmonie. The collaboration was initiated by two of the five Music Connects volunteers, who work at the Bavarian State Opera. The programme centres on the piece Kisoboka – Everything is Possible, which was composed especially for Brass for Africa by the internationally renowned jazz trumpeter Guy Barker and Alan Fernie, one of the world’s leading composers of brass music.

Following its world premiere in Spain, it is now being performed in Germany for the first time. Based on the personal stories of the African soloists, it illustrates the profound transformation that music has brought about in their lives. In concerto grosso form, music becomes a dialogue – between soloists and orchestra, between continents and musical languages, between different educational contexts – when the symphonic sound of the European youth orchestra meets the rhythmic, emotional expressiveness of the African wind ensemble.

The orchestra and band have been rehearsing separately for a year now and are finally united just a few days before the concert. The fact that the musicians from Uganda are able to travel to Germany at all is a monumental logistical feat that everyone involved has worked together to achieve. As the title says: Anything is possible!

Africa Day at Gasteig HP8

The concert at the Isarphilharmonie is part of an Africa Day at Gasteig HP8, which begins at 2 PM. It includes an exhibition of photographs of BidiBidi by Geoffroy Schied, who works as a photographer at the Bavarian State Opera and has been documenting Lab Uganda through his lens since the project’s conception.

Visitors can take part in drumming and dance workshops and enjoy plenty of music. There will be a screening of the award-winning documentary Topowa! (Luganda for “Never give up!”) in the Projektor. After the orchestral concert at the Isarphilharmonie, the festivities continue in Hall E with live music from the band Abataaka and a DJ.

So what would you wish for, if anything were possible? “That we not forget Africa. That we keep on going and bring people together through music,” says Annette Davidson of Music Connects. “Events like this are a small reward for the energy we put into our work.”