Geoffrey Oryema, Songwriter, singer
He was born in 1953 in Soroti, in the eastern kingdom of Buganda, later Uganda. His family belongs to the noble Acholi people, who live on the border between Sudan and Uganda. As a child, he learned pentatonic music and played the seven-string harp (the nanga), the thumb piano and the flute. As a teenager, he discovered the Anglo-Saxon rock culture and learned to play the guitar.
In February 1977, when his father who was Minister of Water and Resources was assassinated, Geoffrey decided to leave his country. He first went to Kenya and then, for love of the French language, decided to go to Paris, which was then the epicentre of the new African music. There, he was recognised as a refugee by Ofpra in May 1977.
His first recordings were noticed by the programmers of WOMAD, a world music festival initiated by Peter Gabriel. Geoffrey recorded his first album, Exile, in 1990, produced by Brian Eno. At the forefront of a new wave of African artists who favour acoustics, the album is composed of guitar tracks and songs accompanied by African instruments. The hit Ye Ye Ye would go on to be used as the theme song for Michel Field's TV programme Cercle de Minuit. Land of Anaka, a reference to his home village, expresses the heartbreak of exile in a slow and melancholic track.
Geoffrey Oryema has become one of the leading world music artists, with a string of concerts and albums. Always at the confluence of Africa and the West, he blends the guitar with traditional instruments and sings in French, English, Kiganda and Acholi. He has been a naturalised French citizen since 1984.
His last album, From the heart, which was recorded in Paris, London, Moscow and Lorient, features La lettre (The Letter), a song addressed to Joseph Kony, the leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army, a Ugandan insurgent movement that is at the root of one of the world's most neglected and deadliest conflicts, made up of 80% children fighters, most of whom were abducted by force. Geoffrey Oryema sang it in New York in October 2010 at the United Nations General Assembly in front of two thousand people.
In 2016, he walked up the steps of the Cannes Film Festival, with Sean Penn, who had selected one of his tracks for the soundtrack of his film The Last Face. In the same year, he returned to Uganda for the first time to sing.
He lent his name and support in 2016-2017 to an accommodation centre for asylum seekers in Bobigny, France.
He died in Lorient on 22 June 2018. His ashes were later scattered in Anaka, the land of his ancestors in northern Uganda, which he evokes in his song Land of Anaka.