King Michael

DJ Michael commonly known as King Michael is a Ugandan recording raga dancehall artist who broke through the music industry with a hit single called a Wandekera omwana in 2006. Michael was first a DJ at Lido beach then changed career after recording a successful hit which earned him a name and became the top dancehall artist in the country. >br< In 2014 he rebranded and changed his name from DJ Michael to King Michael and according to him, he did this because he was fed up of doing two jobs whenever he was hired to perform. Michael is among the music artists that joined politics and he is a strong supporter of the NRM government and President Museveni. >br< King Michael birth name Michael Mugwanya was born on September 15, 1979, in Nsambya Hospital. The self-proclaimed dancehall king comes from the family of Mr Charles Katatumba who is the father and Ms Betty Kisitu who is the mother. Michael is the firstborn in the family of six children. He was raised in Najjanakumbi Stella and at the start of his education journey he joined Najjanakumbi junior school and after his primary, he joined Najjanakumbi secondary school but he didn’t go far and he dropped out of school because of financial issues. He says his mother could no longer afford school fees and Michael dropped out of school and started selling charcoal at Stella. Mugwanya alias DJ Michael joined the music industry at a tender age and this was because he had dropped out of school due to lack of school fees. He started as an emcee in 1997 at a club called Britannia and because of his incredible performance, the Lido beach management signed him as a DJ in 2000 although he didn’t know how to mix. Fortunately, he meant Mr Sentongo the technician of Ange Noir disco club who taught him how to mix music and only in one year he had become a full DJ. >br< While at Lido beach he started to emcee and DJ. In 2004 he started singing and he released a single called Bell which was promoting a beer called Bell lager and it was appreciated by most of the party animals at Lido beach although it didn’t get a lot of airplay. Michael didn’t give up recording music and in 2006 he released a song called Wandekera omwana which turned his life around and it became Kampala’s anthem at a time. In the same year, he released another single called Eno lido which was appreciating how nice Lido beach was and by this time around he was still a DJ at Lido beach. After making his breakthrough hit song Michael had not yet started doing music performances although the song was already a hit single in Uganda’s music industry and according to Michael he was invited by Ragga Dee to perform in a certain club in Mbarara and he paid him 200,000 shillings which was a lot of money according to Michael. >br< According to Michael, he was paid 600,000 shillings monthly at Lido beach and after being paid 200,000 shillings by Ragga Dee this opened up his eyes on venturing into stage performances and stop being just a residential DJ at Lido beach. On returning from Mbarara‘s stage performance, the management of Lido beach fired him saying he had missed work and Michael says this was an opportunity to concentrate more on his music career. After three months the management called him back to work after seeing how big he had become but Michael requested for three million monthly salaries which Lido beach could not afford and they just remained as friends. In 2008 Michael headed to Sir Mesach Semakula’s studio called and Kann records and he recorded another blockbuster hit called Kwata Kwata and In the previous year he had opened up a group called dancehall crew which had artists like Ragga pimpy, Mc Percy and Wikedem. In 2013 Michael rebranded his name from DJ Michael to King Michael and he said did this because it was confusing people and at times promoters could hire him thinking that he was going to do both. In 2019 he held his first music concert at Freedom city which flopped and left him in debts. After the concert, Michael started asking for a bailout from the president since he was a strong supporter of the NRM regime. Later Baalam came to his rescue. Awards