Afropop Worldwide

Waltham, Massachusetts has in recent years gained an unlikely nickname: “Little Kampala.” That is because the historic mill city is currently home to about 1,500 Ugandans, two Ugandan restaurants, several churches with services in the Luganda language, and since 2009, Radio Uganda Boston. For this week’s Afropop podcast I sat down with one of the station’s DJs, Patrick Kawalya, whose weekly "Kadongo Kamu Special" draws thousands of listeners from throughout the global diaspora. Patrick told me about the history of Kadongo Kamu, Uganda’s oldest popular music genre, and introduced me to some of its gems: [soundcloud url="https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/217234804" params="color=ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false" width="100%" height="166" iframe="true" /] You can hear more of Patrick—AKA DJ Paddy—at radiougandaboston.com, where he hosts both the Tuesday evening "Kadongo Kamu Special" and a Saturday night dance show.