Dancing with the gods: Okwawula Kabona Entujjo or The Baganda indigenous religion priest ordination festival

The connection between the culture of performance and performance of culture in post-colonial theatre in Uganda, is found is indigenous religious ritual festivals. Throughout colonial and post-colonial generations, participants and contemporary artists have interacted with this traditional performance. Popular theatrical representations that instantaneously make indigenous dance and song synonymous with the Baganda’s religious worship reproduce two aspects both of which encode performance and festival in very specific ways. Noticeably, rough, untidy, unkempt bodies and a certain condition of possession linked to ‘pagan’ worship are presented to the audience. To understand the performance of entujjo y’okwawula bakabona or the priest ordination festival, and the roles of the various actors one needs knowledge of the cultural and religious context and the nature of the relationship between the community and the religious structures. Buganda, located in Uganda’s central region, possesses cultural practices and forms which influence Ugandan creative life, especially theatrical performance. For this discussion, I will concentrate Buganda’s okwawula bakabona, the festival of ordaining priests indigenous spirit installation festival. The festival usually follows a specific structure in which music and songs are played and dances are performed that prompt the appearance of spirits and cause the initiate and other people to be possessed by the ghosts and spirits. The Baganda of Buganda, whose indigenous language is Luganda, live in the Central Region of Uganda, which is bordered by Bunyoro, Busoga and Ankole, all Bantu speaking regions. As late as the 1990, various clan communities in Buganda still maintained the pre-colonial practice of inviting people to participate in their religious festivals, such as entujjo y’okwawula bakabona, the indigenous priests’ ordination festival. Modern okwawula kabona ritual festivals may be few and apart, but more emblematic are the small congregations in rural shrines that are hosted by priests or families from within a single clan. Today, as in pre-colonial times, many indigenous religious festivals lead the family and society to recognise their members through feasting, dancing, singing and giving.