Every Friday night, the pulse of music and laughter echoed through the walls of Elephant Lounge in Kasese. As the leader of The Blast Live Band, our job was to entertain, to lift
spirits, spark memories, and bring joy to those who gathered. Music was our mission, and the road was our routine. But one quiet Saturday morning after a performance, something shifted. What began as another casual stroll outside town turned into a haunting encounter, one that rewrote our purpose and changed the way I saw the world around me.
Kasese had always been more than a gig stop for us. Nestled near Queen Elizabeth National Park, it was a town cradled by majestic views: the Rwenzori Mountains to one side and the wide open stretch of wilderness to the other. We loved playing there, not just for the crowd, but for the feeling, as though nature itself listened to our instruments.
One morning after our Friday show, I woke up early and wandered off beyond the hotel grounds. I wanted peace. Maybe new lyrics. Maybe inspiration. As I followed a dirt path through tall grass and scattered rocks, the gentle sound of water guided me to the Kazinga Channel, a waterway I had only heard of in passing. It was not marked by any signboard where I stood, and the footpath to it was barely a trail. But it was there, quiet, tired, and slowly fading.
The riverbed was shallow, the water murky and filled with plastic bottles and blackened patches of waste. Along the banks, broken tree stumps leaned like forgotten monuments. A few years ago, I learned from a local, this channel flowed deep and clear, a source of life for buffalo, elephants, and even hippos who would occasionally wander close by. Now it was a fading memory of what once was.
As I stood there absorbing this loss, an elderly man approached. He introduced himself as Mzee Joram, a retired park ranger who once guided tourists through Queen Elizabeth. He saw the sadness in my eyes and began to speak, as if he had been waiting years for
someone to listen.
“This channel,” he said, pointing with his walking stick, “once sang. You would hear the fish splashing, birds dancing in chorus, and even lions resting nearby. We called it “Omugyera gwebyeshongoro” the Channel of Songs. But the songs stopped when the trees were cut. When plastic came. When no one cared.”
His voice shook, not with age, but with heartbreak. And for a moment, I felt ashamed. We had traveled this region for months, performed in places surrounded by endangered
beauty, yet we never noticed what was dying around us.
Until that moment, I had never paused to think that our music, our loud sound systems and vibrant shows, played just a few kilometers from such fragile ecosystems. It dawned on me that entertainment could be both a light and a shadow. We could inspire, yes, but we could also distract people from noticing what truly matters. That moment marked the beginning of a deeper awareness, not only of nature’s silence, but of our own role in either preserving or eroding it.
That evening, back with the band, I told them everything. The silence that followed was louder than our Friday applause. That week, we wrote a new song, different from anything we had ever played. It did not have the usual beats or hooks. Instead, it opened with the soft hum of a kalimba and a simple chorus in Runyakitara:
“omugyera gwangye, otagarukamu kurira / twimukyire hamwe niiwe, turwanirire obuhangwa…”
(My river, dry your tears / We rise with you, we defend nature…)
We performed it the following Friday. At first, the crowd stared, puzzled. But then they listened. By the final chorus, hands were in the air, some swaying, some wiping tears. The message had landed.
That song became a turning point for us. To our surprise, people started calling in, asking about the river. What was wrong with it? Could it be saved? Suddenly, a song became a spark, and that spark ignited a conversation we didn’t know the town was waiting to have. We were no longer just musicians. We had become messengers.
From that day on, our band was never the same. We began partnering with local conservation groups, offering to perform at awareness events. We visited schools before gigs, telling children about the rivers, forests, and animals that needed protection. We became musical ambassadors, not just for entertainment, but for Earth.
Our travels deepened. We saw how poaching had emptied once-busy trails in Kibale. How wetlands near Mbarara were slowly disappearing under concrete. But we also saw hope: school children planting trees, communities cleaning up rivers, and elders teaching forgotten eco-wisdom through folktales.
One unforgettable moment was when we were invited to play at a tree-planting festival in Fort Portal. Before our set, a group of children performed a drama about a greedy logger who destroyed his village’s sacred forest. The performance ended with a simple line: “If the forest dies, so do we.” That line stuck with me more than any lyric I had written. It reminded me that stories, whether sung, acted, or spoken, have the power to shape how people live. And we had a duty to tell them right.
I realized then that conservation doesn’t need a classroom or a lab coat. Sometimes, it needs a guitar, a voice, and a message. Music has always had the power to change minds, and when tied to a cause greater than ourselves, it becomes unstoppable.
Our band’s journey became more than a career. It became a calling. And every time we step on a stage, whether in a small lounge or under open skies, we remember the Kazinga Channel’s silence. We remember Mzee Joram. And we play not just for joy, but for justice. For life. For the songs that rivers once sang, and the voices that can help bring them back.
Word Count: Approximately 1,101 Author: Wilson Amos Mwebaze Nationality: Ugandan Email:wilsonamosmwebaze@gmail.com
Band: The Blast Live Band, “We play not just for joy, but for justice. For life.”