COVID-19 and the Ugandan Presidential Election: Contesting Lockdown Authority in Popular Songs


 The COVID-19 pandemic struck when Uganda was in the middle of an acrimonious campaign season, in which longstanding president Yoweri Museveni was being challenged by Bobi Wine, a reggae singer turned politician. When Museveni imposed a strict lockdown, musicians sympathetic to Wine responded with songs about COVID-19 that challenged the government’s short-term, biopolitical demarcation of the national emergency. Pier and Mutagubya interpret a selection of Ugandan COVID-19 pop songs from 2020, considering in musical-historical perspective their various strategies for re-narrating the health crisis.