Bobby Kolade Growing up, did you ever listen to the radio?

Authentically Plastic Yes, of course. I used to listen to Rick Dees... what station was that?

BK That was Capital FM! (Sings) Rick Dees and the Weekly Top Forty! I used to have a cassette player, and I would wait for my favorite tracks to come on and record them.

AP Same! Our cassette player also had a recorder. You’d sit there on a Sunday afternoon, you know? From 12 till 4.

BK Then, on Saturday nights on Capital FM, there was this DJ, I don’t remember his name, but he used to get drunk on the show. He used to do the morning show on weekdays with Christine, and then on Saturday nights he did the party nights. At the start of the show, he was clear, but towards the end... 

Authentically Plastic He was trashed! 

BK I always hoped there was someone to drive that motherfucker home. Why don’t we like the radio here? 

Authentically Plastic Back then, I used to listen to the radio because what I heard at the time was genuinely new. But then—it’s funny—the DJs at those stations are probably still the same DJs who were there when we were kids, like
our president. 

Bobby Kolade You can go away for 13 years, come back, and the culture is pretty much where you left it.

Authentically Plastic Yeah. It’s wild. I think if anything has changed, it’s been within the younger generation. But the problem is that a lot of the people who control the airwaves are still from the old guard.

Bobby Kolade I was thinking about everything you’re doing—your sound and your look when you’re on stage…and I say on stage because you always put on a performance.

Authentically Plastic I appreciate the kind of DJ who is in the background, keeping the focus on the music. I used to think about doing that, and I was torn at some point because I love music so much, but I came to realize that serving a look can take the music to a whole other dimension. Not everyone who comes to the club is crazy about music. Some people are just party people, period. Sometimes serving a look can make people focus on the mix and the DJ. 

Bobby Kolade Is there anyone else in Uganda who’s doing what you’re doing? What you’re doing is so singular here in terms of sound and aesthetics. 

Authentically Plastic I do wonder. Kampala is big and there are places that we have not really been to. It sounds pretentious, but honestly, I don’t know of anyone else. 

Bobby Kolade ANTI-MASS is a series of parties that you host here in Kampala. When did it start? What motivated you to start? 

Authentically Plastic It started in December 2018. We used to have house parties, and they were cute, but I never shook the feeling that we were hiding, or afraid, in a domestic space. I’d wonder, why are we here? I love a good house party, but there is a need to exert ourselves in other spaces that are not just domestic. And it’s not about exerting oneself to exist for other
people. ANTI-MASS really started out of the need to have a party that was not domestic. Its nomadic nature creates an aspect of safety in that you don’t allow yourself to get too attached to a specific place—or known in a specific neighborhood. 

Bobby Kolade There’s also less sexual tension at a house party. The scene in Kampala is small. The creative scene is even smaller, and so everyone knows each other at all of the house parties; it’s not sexy. 

Authentically Plastic At ANTI-MASS, you start to feel like the beginnings of that tension. A major thing with house parties was this anonymity or the lack of it. I remember going to a party in Europe somewhere, and the door policy was so strict. It became a kind of space where everyone knows each other. And it used to happen in this former brothel, but there was no sexual energy or tension at all because you need an aspect of anonymity for that to happen. And that’s always a challenge. How do you keep the door secure while still allowing a certain level of anonymity? So people you don’t know seep through because, with being afraid of police presence or chauvinists, there is a risk of shutting oneself off completely. How do you do that? It’s really a fine line, and it rests on the person at the door.

Bobby Kolade Where do you see this going? ANTI-MASS happens, what, four times a year, quarterly? But by the time ANTI-MASS takes place, everyone around us is hungry for a party, even with other events like its pre-parties and afterparties and Nyege Nyege happening.  Do you think it’s something that you’d want to host more often?

Authentically Plastic No, I think having a quarterly party is nice. It’s just the right amount. I want the quality of the parties to improve. Whether that means adding a visual aspect to the party or whatever. But I want to keep it at four parties every year and just increase the energy or the intensity. I’d really like to allow people to miss it a little bit.  

Bobby Kolade When did you first listen to electronic music? Where were you? It can’t have been in Kampala.

Authentically Plastic It wasn’t in Kampala; this is the thing! I mean, I probably had listened to electronic music before, maybe cheesy electronic shit. But there’s a point where you come into a consciousness around electronic music, where the song pierces you with such intensity. This is something else, you know. The first time I felt that feeling was when I went to school in South Africa. The scene in Cape Town was really interesting because it’s a city that has so many different people from everywhere. There was a group of parties that coalesced around this energy and one of them was this party called Cold Turkey. It was totally mixed in terms of sexuality, a very creative scene, and very stylish. I was just this kid from Uganda, and I was hearing this mix of songs, like kwaito, UK bass, everything. It felt mutational because I knew what kwaito sounded like, I knew what gqom sounded like.

Bobby Kolade When you’re there in the club, and it’s loud, and you’re experiencing it, it’s different, though. Were you immediately blown away? Trapped? Or were you hesitant? Were you shocked?

Authentically Plastic No! I threw myself in headfirst! I wouldn’t say I was shocked, but there was a sense of something really different that I’d never experienced before. 

Bobby Kolade I think it’s interesting that you first experienced that kind of music in an African country. Because when I first moved to Berlin in 2005, I was still listening to Destiny’s Child. That was my music. And then my friends in Berlin took me to an open-air situation near Wilde Renate. I just stood there and did not understand what was going on.

Authentically Plastic Really?

Bobby Kolade I saw white people one-two stepping, and I thought, this isn’t how we dance. You know how Berlin Techno used to be, the monotony. I remember feeling out of place. And then, my first time in Berghain, I hated it. When I started studying fashion, I started going to smaller parties. There was this party called Berlin Hilton, every Wednesday. Slowly my appreciation for electronic music built up, and obviously, at some point in Berlin, it was all I would listen to, and Berghain became my second home.

Authentically Plastic I have to say, though, in response to the previous question, South Africa was just the first exposure, but I feel like moving to San Francisco for University was really impactful.

Bobby Kolade I think something we have in common is that we both left Uganda and sort of encountered this whole new world of music. You came back much sooner than I did. I was away for 13 years. What was it like when you came back in 2017? You had discovered electronic music, which really pulled you, and then you moved back to Kampala. Wasn’t there a vacuum?

Authentically Plastic Yeah, it definitely felt like there was a vacuum, but that was around the time I started going to the Nyege Nyege parties. Nyege Nyege started in 2015. That was the year I left Uganda, so it had been happening for some time. When I came back, there was a scene around it, and I thought it was interesting. But there were things that I still wanted to hear, which is part of why I started throwing my own parties. I wanted to have a space where you could be surprised. The important thing is not so much the sounds that I heard. It’s the element of surprise. 

Bobby Kolade You don’t know what’s going to happen. You don’t know who you’re going to meet. You don’t know when you’re going home.

Authentically Plastic Exactly. Those are the spaces I try to cultivate with my parties. Every time we organize a party, I tell everyone on the line-up, listen here, you can play whatever the fuck you want. Play whatever you’re scared of playing at other parties. This is the party to play that. I think it’s really fostered an environment of experimentalism. 

Bobby Kolade When I came back, you were already busy, Nyege was already happening, Anti-Mass was already happening. I came into a scene that I really appreciated.

Authentically Plastic Oh yeah, that’s true. You were moving around permanently at the time the first ANTI-MASS was happening.

Bobby Kolade It blew me away instantly. It actually changed my tastes in music. Less Berlin-techno. Do you think your music and playing style have been majorly informed by playing in a vacuum and not being influenced by what you hearin clubs here? You can literally just reinvent yourself.

Authentically Plastic Yeah, there is a space for that type of music [in Kampala]. It’s funny saying ‘that type’ because the type we’re referring to is just something that would surprise, something out of the ordinary. This is a space where you could hear stuff you’ve not heard before. It informs my style of playing for sure. Although I know the references that I’m playing with, I don’t know them as much as a European would know them, like, this is EDM, this is techno, this is new beat, this is vogue music; the categories. There’s a way in which an awareness of the categories immobilizes you as an artist. I’ve started to become more aware of things. The cultural space in which I’m playing is not aware of those references, so it’s all just a wall of sound. Literally. The freedom to do anything is immense here, because people are genuinely just curious and are probably hearing things for the first time. That can be a really creative space to occupy.

Bobby Kolade Speaking of people hearing things for the first time, one of the things I hear quite often in Kampala while talking about electronic music is that it’s a white thing. Ebyo bya’bazungu. 

Authentically Plastic It’s considered white, but I think that one thing that the Nyege Nyege festival has done that’s really good is that now people associate the sound more with Nyege Nyege than bazungu. Because the electronic music they’re offering has different aspects, so much of it is undeniably black: kwaito, gqom, kuduro. This association is still a generalization, but it’s a better generalization than saying it’s white people’s music. It shows that Nyege Nyege has kind of complicated things for people. 

Bobby Kolade Let’s talk about your look for Nyege Nyege 2019 and the reactions the look—incited. What were you wearing?

Authentically Plastic It’s important for me in my performances to give a sense of somebody who’s supposedly male disposing of their masculinity. It’s political. And that shock for people creates a nice setting for music because I’m going to play and go in any musical direction. I sellotaped the bust of a silver mannequin to my body and wore a red wig. While I was at the festival, people couldn’t really tell—I was basically passing. During my set, everything seemed fine; the music and the look were in control. After the festival, the wrong people landed on the video. Obviously, with video, people have more time to really digest the content. And at that stage, they figured out, oh, this person is not a cis woman. That’s where the trouble was. I think the video was taken down at some point.

Bobby Kolade Boiler Room streamed your set live, and it was recorded right?

Authentically Plastic Yeah. The video was uploaded. Apparently, it attracted the attention of the wrong kinds of people. It created some problems in terms of just me worrying about my safety. They latched onto that video to attack the festival as being immoral, and I became this perfect example of the ‘decadence’ and immorality of Nyege Nyege. But I was kind of protected by my look. It gave me an element of anonymity. My video was circulating in Kampala, but nobody really knew who I was. I think that’s how the look can protect you as well while putting you at risk at the same time.

Bobby Kolade Do you get a sense that we live in a culture of self-sabotage? I’m just thinking about what you’re saying about the backlash that Nyege Nyege gets every year from the Minister of Ethics and Integrity or from the church groups. Yet, at the same, time Nyege Nyege has been listed as one of the top festivals in the world. 

Authentically Plastic You don’t mean self-
sabotage, but rather sabotaging each other.

Bobby Kolade I mean that as a nation, we sabotage ourselves by always going against things that are actually working for us. Look at the number of tourists that come in, the money that Jinja earns as the festival’s host city. It’s a crazy
phenomenon. I see this happening all the time. 

Authentically Plastic For sure. We always go against our own interests.

Bobby Kolade Why?

Authentically Plastic That’s the big question.

Bobby Kolade One thing I feel about you as an
individual is…you have a sense of loyalty. I’ve known you for two years now. There’s a strong sense of loyalty you have to family, to your country, to certain friends. Even though, especially when it comes to family and the country, they might not fully understand or accept you for who you are. Where does this loyalty come from?  

Authentically Plastic I wouldn’t describe it as loyalty. I’d say I am drawn to it. Even if I moved somewhere else, I think I would still come here at least once a year. Family and the country may misunderstand you, but I try to have empathy for the position that people are in. I appreciate that not everybody has made the big jumps that I have  in terms of thinking and culture. I try to be patient with people. And I try to carry that with me in my personal relationships and friendships. Just patience. 

Bobby Kolade What draws you most to Kampala?

Authentically Plastic The ease of movement in Kampala is really special to me. Life doesn’t have to be regimented and
orderly. But this ease of movement is also a contradiction. We have a really intense ease in this society, but then there are things we are just really rigid about, like sexuality and religion. So to live in Kampala really is to constantly live in these two different realities. I mean, it drives me crazy sometimes. 

Bobby Kolade We live in a culture where, in our day-to-day lives, women are still wearing Catholic-inspired dresses. Girls go to school with white socks up to their knees. 

Authentically Plastic But then you also have the girls who wear really short dresses and dress however the fuck they want. This is Kampala. Always those two realities colliding, total conservatism and women who do whatever the fuck they want. 

Bobby Kolade The slay-queens in the tightest dresses in the world, the hair, the make-up…It’s like the more extreme they are, the less people can touch them. 

Authentically Plastic Yes, exactly. The look can shock the public so much that they just can’t handle it. I love that. I channel that when I’m serving looks at parties. You go so far beyond the frame of reference that people just don’t know what to say. 

Bobby Kolade It reminds me a lot of Bobrisky’s audacity to exist in Nigeria. She is so far ahead of her time and almost bizarre to the average person. Yet Nigerians are left with no choice but to like her.  

Authentically Plastic And just accept it! 

Bobby Kolade Accept, like, and follow. 

Authentically Plastic It’s incredible.