Don’t Mistake Privilege For Progress: What Eddy Kenzo Got Wrong About The Old Guard

Speaking publicly about what distinguishes his generation of musicians, Eddy Kenzo praised their peers for “changing the narrative” — specifically, for investing in their personal image and appearance. He drew a contrast with older artists, suggesting the previous generation had not achieved comparable financial or professional success. It was the kind of statement that sounds like a compliment to one group while quietly burying another.

Fred Sebatta heard it. So did Kibijigiri, Kazibwe Kapo, and Willy Mukabya. And they responded — not with insults, but with something far more inconvenient: facts.

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The debt behind the music

Sebatta’s response was not a defensive rant. It was an accounting. He revealed that during his peak years as a Kadongo Kamu artist, he took out high-interest loans to fund his career — loans that ballooned into debts approaching Shs 260 million, a financial burden he is still managing today. Let that figure land for a moment.

This is not the story of an artist who failed to plan. This is the story of an artist who planned within the brutal constraints of his era — no streaming royalties, no corporate sponsorships courting musicians for brand deals, no social media platforms to turn a viral moment into a revenue stream. The infrastructure that today’s artists take for granted simply did not exist. The financial support from stakeholders that Sebatta references — the kind that props up today’s releases and tours — was not on offer.

To evaluate a generation’s success without acknowledging the conditions under which they operated is not analysis. It is arithmetic without context. And coming from the president of a federation meant to represent all Ugandan musicians, it stings in a way that goes beyond personal offense.

Image is easier when infrastructure exists

Eddy Kenzo is right that his generation has invested heavily in appearance and image — and the results show. Ugandan artists today are more visible on international stages, more polished in their visual presentation, and more commercially savvy than any previous generation. That is real, and it deserves credit.

But here is what the narrative of “changing the story” quietly glosses over: image is infinitely easier to cultivate when there are people willing to fund it. When label deals, event promoters, brand partnerships, and even government adjacency create a scaffolding around your career, dressing well and showing up looking successful becomes a strategy, not a sacrifice. For the Kadongo Kamu generation, survival itself was the strategy.

Kadongo Kamu, Uganda’s beloved guitar-and-narrative folk tradition, was never a genre built on gloss. It was built on storytelling — sharp, sometimes satirical, deeply rooted in the lived experience of ordinary Ugandans. Its artists were not competing for the same metrics. To judge them by the standards of a completely different music economy is to compare a subsistence farmer to a greenhouse operator and ask why the farmer’s yields were lower.

What leadership actually requires

The UNMF presidency carries a specific responsibility: to advocate for all Ugandan musicians — the celebrated and the forgotten, the current chart-toppers and the veterans who built the floors those charts now stand on. When the person holding that office makes statements that diminish a generation of artists, even unintentionally, it sends a signal about whose dignity the federation is actually prepared to protect.

Eddy Kenzo may not have intended malice. Perhaps it was careless phrasing. Perhaps he genuinely believes his generation earned something the old guard did not. But good intentions do not absorb impact. The veterans felt the remark as dismissal, and their response — measured, specific, grounded in lived experience — deserves a measured, specific reply.

An apology would be appropriate. More importantly, an acknowledgment: that financial success does not equal artistic legacy, that conditions shape outcomes, and that the music of Fred Sebatta and his contemporaries gave Ugandan culture something irreplaceable — long before the cameras were good enough to make anyone look like a star.

The record should reflect the truth

Narrative shapes history. When we allow the current moment to rewrite the past in its own image — when “changing the story” becomes a way of saying “the story before us didn’t matter” — we lose something essential about what music is actually for.

Kadongo Kamu still plays in homes, at funerals, at celebrations across Uganda. Its songs are still quoted, still hummed, still passed from grandparents to grandchildren. That is not failure. That is permanence — which, by the way, is a form of success no loan can repossess.

Fred Sebatta is still paying a debt from a career spent making music that outlasted the bank’s interest rates. The least the industry can do is acknowledge that the bill he paid helped build the stage everyone is now performing on.

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