A friend sent me this link to an all girls brass band in Mbale, Uganda. She knew my love of Uganda and how delighted I would be to see this beautiful land again even through YouTube. I am so proud of these young ladies! Mbale is about 152 miles northeast of where we lived near Kampala, Uganda. The director of this piece is a ten year old girl.
Here it is! The first all girls Brass Band in Africa!
It won’t come as a surprise to most of you to learn that girls are often discriminated against in Uganda. This is especially so in music. A girl asking to join a local brass band will often be met with a sneer and the usual comment of “girls are too weak to play a brass instrument – you go and play a side drum”.
In Mbale Schools Band we take the opposite view and encourage as many girls as possible to play an instrument. More than a third of our players are girls. So to all other Ugandan brass band leaders we say “look what you are missing out on”!
The march the girls are playing is called The Villager by Maurice Raynor.