Davis Kafeero: 36 years of singing professionally at funerals

Going professional
Shortly, little Kafeero began singing his church hymns in the neighbourhood and villages a couple of kilometres away.
“I would just enter a bar or stop at a market, wherever people were gathered, and randomly begin singing church hymns. Some people would give me some money, say Shs100 or Shs200, while others would say, ‘This little boy is going insane.’”The singer remembers that he went on singing like this for a couple of years, until one person in the village picked interest in him and even bought him a bicycle to help him go sing at church –where he went with the choir whenever they had a vigil or funeral to sing at.

When he completed his Senior Six around the time the NRM took power 1986, suddenly, professional doors opened.
“The first people to hire me were the Wavamuno family. Gordon Wavamuno’s sister lost a child and they hired me to go sing through the vigil, paying me my first big bounty of around Shs500,000 –only that the money of that time had very little value.”

Kafeero recalls that immediately he began singing professionally, he tried to form a band, but everyone he recruited saw no future in the trade and quit. He says it was around the mid ‘90s that he finally managed to get a pianist willing to play with him wherever he had a function, and that it was around 2000 that he managed to add drummers and dancers to make the team of 12 that he has today. However, he normally sings with between three and six members except on very big occasions when the whole team is required.

Only job I ever did for a living
“I have never done another job, it’s the only job I ever did and what has supported me all my life,” Kafeero says. “When I sat my Senior Six in 1986, I decided to concentrate on it and make a career out of it rather than go for further studies. I had every reason to stick to it as I loved it and people had begun to hire me regularly.”
Kafeero confesses it is singing at funerals which has enabled him and his wife to raise a family of four children–buying food, paying school fees, building a house and even making other small investments for extra earnings. He shows me around his bungalow, and it is an impressive one if tending towards modest –especially with impressive furnishing inside, from a large flat screen to ornate sofas to a plush dining table.

On how he has really been able to thrive on earnings from his trade through the years, Kafeero acknowledges that he was never cheap, further revealing that today he charges between Shs2m and Shs3m (depending on whether it is vigil or it will also include singing and emceeing at the burial ceremony ).

Leaving death at the funerals

The singer acknowledges that regularly being at funerals (singing next to remains of the deceased amid sorrowful mourners and leading out mourners for the actual interment) has always had the potential to make his life gloomy. However, the profoundly jolly and hilarious man says he has always endeavoured not to let himself walk away with gloom from his work – “I leave death at the funerals when going home.”

The singer says even when at work at the vigils and funerals, he ensures that he doesn’t think so much about death, not reflecting on where the deceased has gone or the grieving loved ones . “My role is mainly to offer people consolation, so I try not to get weighed down by emotions even when the deceased is someone whose death has depressed me –like it was for Zzimwe and Professor Kajubi,” he says.

On what impact his work has had on his life, Kafeero says it has especially made him acknowledge death as an inevitability about which we can’t do anything, and that resultantly he no longer fears that much. “I came to terms with death long ago,” he says. “When I began singing so much in the ‘80s, I became brave because I saw so many types of bodies … those that had been badly shot or mutilated, families which buried several people at once… “

Earn more than bread
But even more than providing a livelihood, Kafeero says, his career has brought fame, popularity and respect.
“You can see from the fact that you came looking for me for an interview,” the singer says. “My job has made me someone. I have sung at the functions of so many of the mighty people of this country, entering and winning friendship in their homesteads, ” he boasts.
The roster of famous deceased at whose funerals Kafeero has sung includes Andrew Zimwe Kasagga, James Wapakhabulo, Prof Ssenteza Kajubi, James Mulwana, Brig James Kazini, Peter Kakoma, just to scoop a handful off the beach. And not to mention other families of the famous where the singer has been hired when a family member has passed on –from families of central government big wigs, to those of Buganda aristocrats, to those of businessmen, to those of showbiz celebrities. Moreover, Kafeero says, there have been a few cases where rich and powerful people have willed while still alive that he sings at their funerals when they die.

“I cannot forget the day I got to meet Cardinal Nsubuga and won his approval,” the singer says. “It was in the 1980s. I was taken to sing at a ceremony in Masaka, and the late Cardinal was the chief guest. He saw me singing and was impressed with how I improvised lines and sounds into the traditional catholic hymns, and after the function he sent for me and expressed his approval. Even though he learnt that I wasn’t a Catholic but a Protestant, he later sent me a distinguishing gown to sing in – and to this day the gown I wear is only a recent model of what the cardinal gave me.’”

But what sets him apart?

Kafeero thinks he was able to fashion a career out of singing at funerals because it is his God-given calling to console the bereaved. “God must have purposely given me the voice and general body language that soothes mourners,” he says. “Otherwise, I too have always been baffled at how I come to a funeral and all of a sudden people want all other singers to keep quiet so I do all the singing. I’m further perplexed at how I’m able to sing all night and through the following day until burial.”

However, Mike Luwagga, who has seen Kafeero perform at many vigils and funerals over the years, thinks that besides talent, the singer has equipped himself with skills that endear him. “Kafeero knows almost all songs in the Catholic and Protestant hymn books, and additionally he has his own compositions that appeal to someone no matter their religion,” Luwagga says. “He also does not just sing the hymns like a recording; he has a way he plays around the words to fit each particular occasion. When he comes to a funeral, he asks for information about the deceased and about the family, then fits it into the hymns.”

Luwagga further extols Kafeero’s ability to do more than just singing hymns, rather taking on the emceeing function as well, and while at it reading the minds of the bereaved such that he knows when to show and inspire grief and when to joke and lift spirits. Luwagga says Kafeero’s smartness and respect for others at people’s functions is also a key factor. As the singer always turns up in suits and is always sober since he only drinks tea and water while at work.