About Us
Musicians first. Everything else second.
Kakuma Sound was founded in 2018 by a Kenyan producer and an American historian who kept hearing the same thing on their travels: some of Africa's most vital music was happening inside a refugee camp, and almost nobody outside it knew.
Our Mission
Heritage as infrastructure, not nostalgia
We believe refugee camps like Kakuma should be treated not as temporary holding pens but as real, long-term settlements — places whose culture deserves the same investment as their water systems and schools.
That belief starts with something concrete: putting traditional instruments back into the hands of musicians who fled without them. From there, it grows into training, recording, performance and, eventually, a self-sustaining music economy owned entirely by the people who make it.
Kakuma Sound now operates as a Kenya-based NGO with a resident-led Community-Based Organization at its core, and branches taking root in refugee and displacement camps in Uganda, Rwanda and Congo.
How We Got Here
A brief history
Kakuma Sound is founded
Treynor Tumwa and UC Irvine historian Mark LeVine co-found Kakuma Sound after years of independent visits to the camp.
Guggenheim Fellowship
Mark LeVine receives a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship for the project "The Kakuma Sound: Rerooting the Past, Composing the Future," expanding research capacity during the pandemic.
UNESCO seed grant & first festival
A UNESCO seed grant helps fund the first Kakuma Sound Cultural Festival and the camp's first recording studio.
Regional expansion
Backed by Amnesty International's Hanna Grunwald Fund, Kakuma Sound opens branches in Uganda and Rwanda, and artists debut at Uganda's Nyege Nyege Festival.
Glasser Center partnership
A new partnership with UC Irvine's Alec Glasser Center for the Power of Music and Social Change supports a permanent Research and Cultural Center in Kakuma.
The Team
Musicians, scholars & organizers
Treynor Tumwa
Co-founder & Executive Director
Turkana's premier hip-hop and gospel producer, and a music video director, documentarian and photojournalist based between Nairobi and Kakuma.
treytumwa@gmail.com
+254 728 588 373 (WhatsApp)
Mark LeVine
Co-founder
Professor of History at UC Irvine and a Guggenheim Fellow whose research focuses on music and culture in areas of conflict across the Middle East and Africa.
mlevine@uci.edu
+1 949 394 7772 (WhatsApp)
Omer Nzoyisaba
Head, Rwanda Branch
A Burundian sociologist, singer-composer and percussionist specializing in the Royal Drums of Burundi, with two decades of work alongside UNESCO and other international bodies.
omernzoyisaba@gmail.com
+250 789 825 344 (WhatsApp)
Fatou
Festival & Label Liaison
A music manager and festival organizer who has worked with leading West African, European and American artists and labels.
fatou@slingshotsmusic.com
+33 7 54 18 59 69 (WhatsApp)
Petna Ndaliko Katondolo
Board Member
Congolese filmmaker and founder of Yole!Africa in Goma, home to the Ishango Film Festival and a close creative partner of Kakuma Sound's Congo-region work.
Join the Team
We're Growing
Kakuma Sound is always looking for musicians, researchers and organizers to help expand this work into new camps and communities.
Want to Work With Us?