Zadok Adolu-Otojoka and Music Education in Uganda: An Oral History

Zadok Adolu-Otojoka (b. 1932) is one of the prominent music educators and professional performers in the recent history of arts education in East Africa. A Ugandan by nationality, Adolu-Otojoka has served in different professional capacities as music educator, opera singer, folk musician, dancer, composer, and education/culture administrator, at national and regional levels. Educated in Uganda and in the United States, Adolu-Otojoka excelled as a bass-baritone and featured in several professional opera performances alongside celebrated European and American actors and actresses such as Ray Charman, Lance Hardy, Jane Wise, Mike Laflin, and Henry Pearson in the 1970s and 1980s. His most memorable production was Jesus Christ Superstar in which he performed as Caiaphas, in Nairobi, Kenya. His long and distinguished music teaching career spans over half a century starting in the early 1950s through 2006, during which he taught vocal performance, instruments, music theory, and dance and drama courses in the East African region. Although his career is widely discussed, very little or no documentation of his celebrated life is available for reference. Therefore, this oral history was intended to chronicle historical patterns of music education in Uganda through his testimonies as one of the pioneers of music education in colonial and post-independence East Africa. Adolu-Otojoka’s experiences will not only provide valuable inspiration for the young music education discipline in Uganda, but also insights regarding multicultural music education perspectives in general.