When I heard Dj Bush Baby was behind the ‘The jump Off’ I was excited off the bat given his precedent with XXL. I was not disappointed. The show bares a slight similarity to XXL but the segmentation and approach give it a face of its own. I still don’t understand the title ‘The jump off’ Perhaps, I should credit it to the masterminds behind the astounding graphics-Torque.
The show is made up of three segments, The Review, Touch Base and Plan B (wonder if that was borrowed from Sunday Vision, The show is on Urban Television-a vision group enterprise after all).
THE REVIEW: This is the part of the show where entertainment and lifestyle issues are dissected. A panel of what the show portrayed as experts, because of their radio Dj professions, discussed the overly debated and milked dry question of the relevance and popularity of Nigerian music and contrasted it with Ugandan Music.
Chameleon East Africa’s best was basically labelled a-one beat many variations wonder. The song launches dubbed album launches, poor quality videos and fake Jamaican dancehall accents were cited as the failures of the Uganda Music industry.
Navio, with scepticism, Maurice Kirya, with conviction, and Keko were given a heads up as the faces or future of Ugandan Music. I found this conclusion funny given that the panel that included radio personalities Gloria and Rudende endorsed artists from different musical genres. They kept emphasizing the success of Nigerian music as ‘they have a recognisable sound’. Ladies and gentlemen that sound is a dialect-pidgin English. Now if I were to write this article with terminologies like abi, abego, wettin do, it would easily be recognisable as Nigerian; that’s why Ugandan gospel artist Exodus’ song Igwe was at first mistaken for a Nigerian song.
TOUCHBASE: This is more or less the public court of opinion part of the show. The cameras were taken to the street and the wanainchi asked about how they felt about the current Uganda and the pending 50th independence anniversary. Majority said they had no joy in Uganda due to the shocking levels of unemployment, the large gap between the rich and the poor, the poor maternal health and the high levels of corruption. The few that were pleased only noted security as the positive aspect in the country. Needless to say, very few Ugandans will be celebrating on 9th October, 2012.
PLAN B: This is where a celebrity is made to carry out an ordinary person’s day job in case God forbid the fame game failed. The victim was The Mith a.k.a Mr. So Ug and he was such a sport considering he had to be a taxi conductor. He however managed to notice the fine women on the streets of Kampala, he got that conductor characteristic down but luckily he didn’t add ‘sexy ogenda?’ He also made 3.500/- and managed to persuade the driver to go for a meal after a hard afternoon’s work. He noted that he would love to see Navio ‘The bad boy from Rubaga’ his Klear Kut comrade attempt the same.
All in all it was nice having Bush back on screen, and I was just as excited as he was. The show is worth watching and promises a lot-I noticed a researcher in the credits and that’s always a sign of a good show.
Check out The Jumpoff on facebook for its show times as the premier time changes to a different show time.
