9 minute read
EVANS BUKUKU
'Comedy adds life, laughter and flair to anything you do'
Comedian Evans Bukuku has been instrumental in growing a comedy culture in Tanzania and is passing on his skills to a new generation of stand-up students through his Punchline Africa clubs and workshops. He tells Mark Edwards why he believes there is a great future for comedy here.
Evans Bukuku did his first stand-up comedy show when he was 33 years old. “The same age Jesus died,” he points out. As it happened, Bukuku also died that night, figuratively speaking. “It was a weird experience. The show took place on a beach and I learnt the hard way that it was not the right environment for comedy.”
This inauspicious start did not put Bukuku off pursuing comedy as a career, but it did teach him two important lessons: getting venues in Tanzania conducive to stand-up shows is crucial and comedy is a craft that needs to be worked on and refined.
Now, 10 years on Bukuku is one of Tanzania’s best known and well-regarded comics with a cheeky, unflappable presence honed on stage, radio – he had his own show on Dar es Salaam’s Cloud Media until 2016 – and as an event MC. In 2019 he co-founded Punchline Africa, a comedy club and agency that hosts regular shows at two comedy-friendly venues in the city. The Punchline Comedy Club takes place every two months at Hamu Restaurant, in Masaki, while the weekly Raw, which Bukuku describes as a “comedy gym”, is a chance for budding talent to work on their routines. This new generation is also schooled at Punchline workshops with some of Africa’s biggest names in stand-up – among them South African Kagiso ‘KG’ Mokgadi, AK Dans from South Sudan and Long John from Zimbabwe – sharing their skills while in the country to headline Punchline’s quarterly flagship arena shows Jus’ Laugh A Little, which regularly draw an audience of around 500. It all combines, Bukuku says, “to provide a progressive pipeline for comedy in Tanzania”.
Bukuku’s achievements are even more impressive when you consider he did not just have to make it as a stand-up comic, he also had to create a stand-up culture in Tanzania to make it in.
That culture is up and running, evidenced by a recent statistic that Bukuku is understandably proud in sharing. “Just three weeks ago there were six comedy shows over five nights across Tanzania with different comedy operations and that is unprecedented. That’s a major milestone.”
Inventing the scene
The arrival of Punchline Africa has been a fillip for the scene and Bukuku believes they now have operations in place that will see the comedy culture really take off in Tanzania.
“So far we have put on almost 50 shows,” he says, “from club gigs to arenas. We have done a lot in a short space of time.
“We believe in the long term and we believe there is a great future for comedy here. The word is getting out there and we want to make it bigger and better.
“I’ve been in comedy 10 years. When we started out there was no comedy scene, we had to invent it. My comedy journey to bring life into comedy in Tanzania and have it become a typical night out has been a challenge.”
That Bukuku stuck to the challenge says much about how deep that love of comedy runs within him. ‘I knew I wanted to be a comic from the age of 10,” he says. While his career has taken an often-circuitous route to bring him here, entertaining others has always been at its heart.
Class clown
He admits to being the class clown at school. Born in Mwadui, in the Shinyanga Region, he left Tanzania for the UK with his parents at age four and attended boarding school there until he was 16.
Bukuku says that as a pupil he liked to “be an idiot” in class and make his friends laugh, though he says he was by nature an introvert and “there were students who were clownier than I was, but many of them got expelled”.
Playing the clown was restricted to time away from the family home. Bukuku’s parents had a clearly defined list of suitable professions for their children and comedian was not on it.
“I was a typical young boy who loved to fool around,” Bukuku says, “but not in front of my folks. “They are your typical African parents – only interested in their son being an engineer, a doctor or a teacher. It would have been a difficult conversation to have with my dad – ‘I want to be a comedian.’”
Entertainer: Bukuku’s CV includes being an MC, a radio host and – least successfully – a singer
Images courtesy of Evans Bukuku
Still Bukuku was determined enough to pursue his own path. Once he had completed his GCSE exams at age 16, he returned to Tanzania with his parents to complete his A-levels then set about finding work.
He based himself in Arusha and from there began an entrepreneurial journey that Bukuku laughingly describes as “dotted”. Still there is an identifiable element of performance running through the motley assortment of jobs he took on that suggests he was all the while fine tuning his comedy craft.
The journey began in marketing, selling meat products. Such was Bukuku’s success that he became known in Arusha as ‘Mr Sausage’, a slightly discomfiting monikor that was also given to his hot-dog and burger van that did a roaring trade with what Bukuku calls the “nightime lunchtime” market of hungry locals leaving nightclubs in the early hours.
Radio show
Moving to Dar es Salaam, he worked as salesman in a car dealership, volunteered at radio station Clouds Media (then Clouds FM) before getting his own show, MCing at events and co-founding an audio-visual lighting company. He even recorded and released a music single, but despite coming from a musical family with his late brother Roy a pioneer of Bongo Flava who produced work for sister Enika among many others, Bukuku admits it “didn’t go down so well”.
The stand-up began to take shape with Bukuku setting up his own monthly comedy club, which ran for five years, before launching Punchline with Ahmed Dahal, a friend from his Arusha days. He describes himself as an “observer” and his hilarious routines dissecting everyday life are a big part of why so many Tanzanians are now hungry to spend their time and money on high quality stand-up.
Working on his routine
“I like my routines to have a sense of progress,” he says. “I try to answer questions about why we are the way we are in relation to culture, racism, politics, business and aspirations. I try to make sense of it all. I do a lot of research and come up with some kind of conclusion.
“If I see something that I think could work in a routine, I’ll record it on my phone and work on it later. I don’t put a set time or limit on it, but I do a lot of mental sparring. Inspiration hits me every day and I like to test out my ideas on people.”
Punchline’s Raw club nights offers up-and- coming comedians and complete newbies on a dare the chance to try out their material in a relaxed, open-mic environment. “Jokes are like seeds,” Bukuku says. “You grow them in front of smaller audiences and when it is ready you can show the crowds. I have spent time in New York and visited a small comedy club where the week previously Chris Rock and David Chapelle turned up by surprise to work on new material.”
The renown of these massively successful and wealthy US comedians may seem beyond emulation, but Bukuku wants the next generation of Tanzanian comedians he supports at Punchline to aim high.
The comedy club and agency’s live shows and workshops are predominantly carried out in English as Bukuku – who, given his upbringing, speaks English as a first language but is also fluent in Swahili – wants his students to prime themselves for a worldwide audience.
“We want to encourage comics to reach their potential in Tanzania and beyond,” he says. “We use English as a common language for other comics to come here. We have a system in place and English allows us to evolve at a faster rate.”
This evolution is also helped along by The Writer’s Room, a series of fortnightly workshops in which Bukuku and other established comics dispense tips on material and stagecraft. The sessions are supported by partners including Nafasi Art Space, The Drum and BASATA, The National Arts Council and give emerging comics a space to work on jokes together, gain confidence, to bond as artists and develop comedy content.
Comedy workshop
Timing is considered an essential element in the delivery of a good stand-up routine, but the way Bukuku describes the workshops, giving them the air of a well-drilled bootcamp, he suggests timekeeping is just as important.
“We run a very punctual show. Even aircraft are late, but our acts are on time every time. We instil discipline into these kids so they can apply it in other parts of their life and become better people.”
The students are predominantly young men, aged between 20 and 30. Bukuku offers an explanation for the gender gap that sounds like it might be lifted from one of his comedy routines. “It’s mostly young men because women have options,” he laughs. “Also if you are a good comic someone will call you an ‘idiot’. People tell you ‘You’re crazy, you’re mad’. That’s a compliment in the comedy world, but women are not good about being told that to their face.”
Finding your voice
Among the skills he teaches students to get them to that prized “idiot” level is how to pursue their own authentic voice on stage. “We teach them to be confident in themselves. It’s OK to be inspired by someone, but not to copy them. They have to speak from a place of truth.
“They will also learn how to engage an audience, how to handle a mic and how to remember their routines from start to end.”
The Raw shows are a chance to refine these stage skills and the next step up is a gig at The Comedy Club, the bi-monthly event which has become a staple part of the Dar comedy calendar and a welcome pay day for the comics who make the bill. Bukuku acknowledges making a living as a stand-up is still difficult and his students would do well to follow his lead on diversifying income streams.
“Is it possible to make a living from comedy? Yes. With stand-up comedy? That’s a tough one, but it’s getting there. Stand-up is like the trunk of a tree. It holds all the branches for the fruits you will eventually eat. It will lead to radio, presenting and MCing to bring you your income. Comedy adds life, laughter and flair to anything you do.”
There are other Tanzanian comics who have found success as part of the Punchline family, among them Cleyton Msosa, from Arusha, Sadick Ali, Dogo Pepe – “we started our journey together,” Bukuku says – and poet comedian Hallelujah from Mbeya.
With quality stand-up acts, welcoming venues and an appreciative audience now in place, the Tanzanian comedy culture looks set for success. Bukuku’s debut performance may not have gone well, but he is having the last laugh.
Evans Bukuku is the co-founder of comedy club and agency Punchline Africa
Images courtesy of Evans Bukuku
