Uganda's veejays give Western films a home-grown spin
If there is one thing Jingo Tabula has learned in two decades of bringing Hollywood into the slums and villages of Uganda, it's that every story has a moral.
The message of "Pretty Woman," for instance, is that no condition is permanent. "Rambo, First Blood," says Mr. Tabula, shows that even a soldier is accountable. And at the end of "Crocodile Dundee," he always gets a laugh by reciting a familiar Ugandan proverb: "Nothing cuts like a crocodile's tooth at lunchtime."
"I've found that one can learn a lot about the world through a screen," says Tabula, who is Uganda's premier video jockey. In recent years, so-called veejays, who translate copies of Western movies into local languages, have become so popular that a handful have become local celebrities.
"Veejaying" is now a central form of local entertainment. But the art involves much more than translation. Part sports announcer, part street preacher, part comedian, a veejay must fill in cultural gaps and keep the audience engaged, which - for many veejays - often means taking considerable creative license.
The video jockey is an offshoot of the distinctly home-grown phenomenon of the video hall. Makeshift shacks commonly made of plywood and tin sheeting, they function as the main form of cinema for the Ugandan masses, most of whom cannot afford theater tickets or rentals of pirated DVDs.
Video halls mushroomed around the country in the mid-1980s, when a measure of relative peace and prosperity made copies of foreign movies more accessible. But since most of their patrons did not speak English well, owners brought in translators, who usually sat near the TV set, ideally with a microphone.
Well-known names include VJ Ron, who is known for his intricate translations of detective thrillers, and the Love Doctor, who specializes in romantic dramas and comedies.
Jingo, as his public knows him, is most noted for his cheeky renditions of American action films in Luganda, the local tongue. Hand grenades might become passion fruits in a Jingo translation; characters played by Arnold Schwarzenegger and Bruce Willis evoke proverbs about crocodiles and chickens.
"He is not the most precise, but he is certainly the most colorful," says Lee Ellickson, the American codirector of the Amakula Film Festival, an annual event in Kampala.
Mr. Ellickson says the organizers had tried to include video jockeys in the festival from the beginning, as they are such an integral part of moviegoing in Uganda. The festival features a "Veejay slam," in which some of the country's best-known video jockeys display different styles and compete for the best audience response.
This year, Jingo will teach a workshop on technique for aspiring veejays. He is, after all, one of a handful of video jockeys who have managed to parlay this relatively new street form into financial success, in the mode of hip-hop artists in the US.
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