Dominic Makwa

Dominic DB Makwa is a lecturer at the Department of Performing Arts and Film (PAF), Makerere University in Kampala (Uganda), where he teaches courses across ethnomusicology, music archiving and popular music studies. He received his PhD in Music from Stellenbosch University (South Africa), M.A. in Music through a sandwich programme between Makerere University (Uganda) and University of Bergen (Norway), B.A. in Music from Makerere University and Diploma in Education from Kyambogo University (also Uganda).

Dr Makwa’s research has addressed areas of ritual performance, specifically looking at the integration of music, dance, and imbalu circumcision ceremonies among the Bagisu of eastern Uganda. He has also done studies on music, gender, and sexuality, music (and dance) pedagogy at university, music (and dance) archiving and ecomusicology. In the area of ecomusicology, Dr Makwa has examined musical communication among the Bududa landslide survivors of eastern Uganda, focusing on the role of gender in the mitigation of landslides and how musicians have contributed to the historicization of this disaster.

Since 2019, Dr Makwa has been a team member on the Andrew W Mellon funded Mapping Africa’s Musical Identities (MAMI) project coordinated by The University of Cape Town (South Africa) where he has been investigating how tourism can offer space for revitalisation of bibiwoyo and isonja, a music and dance genre, respectively, which were very common in imbalu circumcision rituals among the Bagisu but are now rarely performed. He is also a member on Approaches to African Sonic Pedagogies (hosted by Rhodes University – South Africa) where he is engaged in a research project entitled Harnessing Community Musicians as Living Archives for the ‘Sustainable’ Teaching and Learning of Ugandan Musics at Makerere University.