Reggae music is singer Anecco Omitto’s greatest love.

In Uganda is one genre that is not attached to particular artists. It is on rare occasions where ragga, dancehall, and RnB artiste get out of their comfort zone and does one or two reggae songs. Case in point, we have seen artists like Bebe Cool, Apass, and Levixone coming out to attempt the reggae genre. Singer Maddox Ssemanda Ssematimba has perhaps been the only name mentioned whenever someone talks about Reggae music in Uganda and ever since he returned from Sweden more than 10 years ago, he has never released any new reggae song but rather he is still feeding Ugandans on his old reggae songs like Namagembe and Nakatudde among other songs.


The Music Industry not many years ago received Anecco Omitto, another artiste who have his heart beating for strictly reggae music. With him being the next big name in Uganda’s reggae music, we talked to Aneccoo about where he got the love for strictly reggae music at a time when no one wants to do reggae in Uganda.


His Journey to reggae music.
Anecco says that as an artist, he grew up trying out all kinds of music but reggae music had never crossed his mind. It was until 2015 when a colleague of his called Annet was a big fan of reggae music and interested him in listening to reggae and being a singer, this made him fall in love with reggae and chose to do it as his main genre.
He started by looking for reggae content on radios and TVs and in less than a month, he had already found all the reggae programs on different radio stations and their timetable. He listened to reggae shows on East African radio, Tanzania every Sunday, from 10:00-12:00 Noon, Touch FM’s Reggae program every Sunday from 5 pm to 8 pm and sometimes up to 9 pm.


It was on these two radio stations that he mainly learned about reggae artists, their songs, the message in the songs, etc. And the following year in 2016, he tries out his first reggae song, “Ewaffe”, (the midwives’ song) that became his turning point into becoming a reggae artiste, for coming out so perfect deep modern roots reggae. The song was too much liked, by both himself and his friends, for the fear of one-hit wonder artiste, he chose not to promote the song.


Then again the following year, 2017, he did a second single, “Otuuse gyolaga”, shot it’s video, to readily becoming his breakthrough reggae song, after garnering daily air plays on FaceTv, that had just been opened up, for two consecutive years. FaceTv had just brought plays of strictly Uganda’s music videos, all day, every day. And what helped Anecoo Omitto’s reggae video to easily garner all this airplays, was for him making good of the void left by Uganda’s musicians, who never had deep reggae music videos, during reggae music videos hours every day, on the television.


“Otuuse gyolaga” too was a deep modern lover’s rock reggae, produced by Skills on the beat, a new producer by then. Anecoo Omitto is quoted in one of articles saying how it felt so good like to be moving around in other ghettos, only for young boys readily identifying him, and begins singing lines in the song, while imitating his dance strokes in the video. He also felt good, when people in the community where he comes from, Mbuya, would feel good, to be watching his videos, one of their own youths, being played on national TVs.


It’s in 2017, that he changed his stage name from “Blazy Eddie” to “Anecoo Omitto”, following taking up the Pan-African teachings of self-love, promotion of origin by putting on native names over foreign and religious names. He was then joined by Malawi’s international reggae and dancehall artiste, Binge to the “Uganda and Malawian girls” collabo, that later becomes the title track of his maiden six tracks reggae EP. It’s all-over all online streaming services.


In 2019, he was invited to perform at the Reggae on the Nile festival in Jinja City. He surprised revelers performing four back to back Ugandan reggae songs. Unlike Kenya that is more of reggae, Uganda’s more of dancehall and ragga, Tanzania is Afro beat (Soukous). After the performance, he was hooked up by international scouts who had already booked him for performances in different parts of the world. Unfortunately, the following year, last year 2020, the world was attacked by the covid-19 pandemic.

He’s EP has a 5stars ratings on Omega music streaming services. “Ewaffe” and “Uganda and Malawian girls” tracks too has each a star ratings. Generally, his music online, is doing well. Currently, Anecoo Omitto is working on an Afro beat (Soukous) EP in his native language, Alur (Luo). He has so far dropped two singles, “Ngom ongeyu wege” and “Openjuru”, a song inspired by Malcolm X’s famous speech, “The ballot, or the bullet”.

He’s expected to drop his first reggae album soon. The albums expected to have fourteen tracks and will be having songs in English, Luganda, Kiswahili and Alur.