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East African collaborations - maybe the federation is coming to us soon

Take for instance, the UTAKE anthem. UTAKE stands for Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya. It's a hip hop song featured Babaluku underground from Uganda, A-Y from Tanzania and Jua Cali from Kenya. The song is pretty cool and given the prominence of the artistes featured on it, it's been enjoying a lot of success. Utake won best hip hop song at Uganda's Pearl of Africa awards. Watch the Utake video

Another great East African anthem is the Fire anthem, which is a reggae joint. Featuring Necessary Noize of Kenya and Bebe Cool of Uganda, it was probably the hottest East African song in 2006 alongside Nameless' Sinzia. Even the East African Reggae Bashment Crew, as they call themselves, released an 'Africa Unite' song. Their song, Kube, won a host of awards at the Channel O music video awards in South Africa last year. Check out the videos at this link - http://www.museke.com/node/941

One of Uganda's biggest artistes, Chameleon, collaborated with Tanzania's Professor Jay to make Sivyo Ndivyo, which was very popular. Chameleon has collaborated with countless East African musicians. Lady Jaydee from tanzania made a song called Distance which features seven languages including Luganda from Uganda and Kinyarwanda from Rwanda. She even put in some Lingala lines to boot. :-)

These songs celebrate various East African music styles; genge, bongo flava, luganda, kapuka, among others. I believe the cultural alignments of various Kenyans, Ugandans, and Tanzanians may ultimately deter the formation of an East African Federation, but with the way all of its people are embracing each other's music and languages, we may not be far away. Besides Blu3 and Chameleon, two of Uganda's biggest acts, sing some songs in Kiswahili as well.