Ssebo Lule is a Ganda visual performance poet, author, and arts entrepreneur. For close to a decade, he’s been producing poetry in print, audio, and performance formats using the Ganda language as his raw material. He hopes to preserve and build the language this way. He’s published 3 Ganda poetry collections so far. His arts initiative SMALLMASAVU is intentional about producing bilingual poetry zines to promote African Literature in indigenous languages.
Waggulu by Ssebo Lule
Essay on Ssebo Lule’s 32° East Residency
by Anna Adima
Waggulu (the Luganda word for ‘up’ or ‘upwards’) explores the intersections between poetry and visual art. Traditionally thought of as distinct art forms, Ssebo Lule bridges the gaps between the two to create a project that is almost anti-disciplinary in nature. A visual performance poet, Ssebo Lule is known to his peers as a Luganda-language wordsmith, who uses his lyrics to critique and hold a mirror up to society. This is his first time exploring poetry using visual art.
Waggulu complements the album Leesigooo that Ssebo Lule will release later this year. Both his visual art and musical projects explore the notion of work and labour, and the personal satisfaction this brings. In this sense, 32° East is the perfect home for Ssebo Lule’s work: the ongoing construction of the site’s Phase II mirrors the metaphors in Waggulu.
Ssebo Lule constructs Waggulu around the object of the matchstick. He was drawn its quotidian nature: nearly every household in Uganda uses matches to light fires for daily essential needs, such as cooking or boiling water. An essential, yet often overlooked, household item, there are very few accessible alternatives to the matchstick. Even if, for example, a match is wet, one must keep striking it to light a spark. Ssebo Lule therefore views the matchstick as a symbol for persistence, and, by extension, of life and art: one has to keep striking to light the fire.
There are two parts to Waggulu. The first is the poetry presented on matchboxes specially crafted for the project. The words ‘teri kuzikiza’ invite the viewer-reader to keep the fire burning. On opening the boxes, one is immersed in anthree-dimensional experience of poetry, as the interior walls of each box are lined with English and Luganda words.
The viewer-reader is required position the box at different angles in order to read the lyrics, almost as if solving a puzzle. Each matchbox contains a different poem, rather than a matchstick, symbolising the essential nature of poetry and art – like a matchstick – in everyday life. The second part to Waggulu are the digital collages. Featuring photographs of matchsticks as their primary element, each consists of different patterns made with the sticks, which embark on a metaphorical journey, and represent human movement and progress. To create the collages, Ssebo Lule used wood glue to create matchstick bundles of various sizes, the photographs of which he used for his digital collages. Some collages are imbued with a few lines of Ssebo Lule’s poetry. The limitations of space challenged him to become creative with brevity, a contrast to the usual lengthy ballads the poet-artist is known for.
It is Ssebo Lule’s hope that Waggulu can inspire the viewer-reader to consider poetry differently, and to invite a different audience to experience the world of verse and rhyme. The environment of 32° East challenged Ssebo Lule’s craft in new ways, as he explored his traditional oeuvre as a piece of visual art, pushing him out of his artistic comfort zone.
Anna Adima is a German-Ugandan writer and researcher based in Kampala, Uganda.
