Tags
Africa, Daily Monitor, Literature, Nabisunsa Girls School, Peter, Peter Kagayi, Uganda, Yes (band)
Peter Kagayi
When I hear ‘the awakening’, it is not about what I understand, rather what I hear and then visualise. I am not sure I understand it. I hear the sounds of reckon, calling out to me to pay attention. And what I visualise is a silhouette of a man walking towards my door in the early hours. He looks different. Not from here. And he seems to be carrying the sun on his head. But my eyes fail me to make out his face. I do not understand why I see the things I see when I hear ‘the awakening’.
Peter Kagayi, Lantern Meet of Poets
by Anne Namuddu
If you know anyone that has tear provoking patriotism, or whose social consciousness is limping around in circles, or on broken crutches, please… wheel them to Uganda National theatre to meet the Lantern Meet psychotherapist, Peter Kagayi, this 4th and 5th October.
The passion with which peter delivers his verse is ethereal. He is made of the stuff that gets prophets chosen by a Deity: passion, charisma, a bold declaration of stinging truths, teaching, influencing minds… I could go on forever, but Peter is an embodiment of all things revolutionary.
A lawyer by profession, Kagayi teaches literature at Nabisunsa Girls School but somehow makes time to write with The Daily Monitor and The Notice newspapers and run a nationally read Blog called kagayipeter.wordpress.com simultaneously.
More important, he is a poet of repute. His literary works would be the eighth wonder of the world if only that position was not in perpetual contest with his stage performance. You need to watch Kagayi. It is a basic need, up there with food and shelter, and nothing on this earth- nothing – should deny it to you.
Peter Kagayi in the recital, Broken Voices of the Revolution
Peter on stage is like a naked live wire lying in the rain. The passion of his words is laden with high voltage shocks that will send spasms through any audience and even resurrect the dead. Think of a corpse that dates back to 3400BC, bound thick in shrouds that have probably turned into fossil, deep, deep, deep in the bladder of the earth- at the sound of Peter Kagayi, its eyes will fly open, and its marble cold lips will exclaim, “good grief! Who was that?! What does he want?!” Yes, a touch of peter’s words and millennium old mummies will jolt back to life.
In this coming recital, our normally sober Peter will stagger onto the stage and spill before your eyes the character of a drunkard whose head is swarming with children’s voices (I am leaking stuff from the rehearsal preparation, but can’t help it). Look out for his composition, Until There Is No Ear To Hear The Prophets, it will harness your minds and take them to a place where he wants them to be or rather where they ought to be.
He is your birth right, come and claim him!
The Lantern Meet of Poets 