Unlike other Artistes who always invite their friends, spend on expensive cakes, drinks and eats during their birthdays celebrations, for a popular City Lugaflow rapper, John Rogers Mulindwa alias Loan Banks was different.
Banks celebrated his 34th birthday on January 28, but chose to take it to his home village in Bweyo, Villa Maria Parish in Kalungu district.
He held his birthday celebration dubbed The African Child at St. Savio Real Africa Bweyo Primary School.
Unlike on other birthday parties, where people request for gifts, Banks’s celebration was different.
For revellers to attend his birthday, they had to give in scholastic materials, including books, pens, pencils and mathematical sets, which he donated to the pupils in Bweyo village.
Banks also organised a walk around the village and gathered building materials and funding to build a neighbouring church called St. Joseph Church Bweyo.
To honour his cause, the church held a mass at his birthday venue and prayed that God gives him a successful career.
Talking about why he chose to shun the pompous life in the city for a simple and local celebration without slay queens, Banks told The Kampala Sun that he wanted to appreciate the very people that brought him up as a child.
“Most of us have always had fun in the city, and held parties and concerts there, but we forget where we came from. There are those village men and women who brought us up. They see us on TV and in the newspapers and even when we go back to the villages, we hide from them to keep our celebrity statuses,” Banks said.
“I thought of doing something special and I came up with this. I am a singer, so the only way I could make them happy was to sing and dance for them, to remind them of those childhood days. And then to do something important for the village,” he said.
Kian Banks’ father (in a blue T-shirt) dances to his son’s songs
Kian Banks performs at his birthday party
The singer promised to continue supporting the people in his village and revealed that he was writing down a song to remind celebrities that the people who raised them deserve to be remembered.


“It was fun watching my father, and his mother, who is my grandmother, dance with me on the floor as villagers enjoy my performance. Now that I have realised I can do something to change my village community, I am writing a song that tells my fellow celebrities to go back to their villages too, to have fun with those that raised them and change their communities for the better,” he said.
To fit into his music signature Muzzukulu Wansamba, Banks traded his pride with cutting off his dreadlocks to appease his parents and appear more decent before the clan and village elders.
He promised to help groom the young talent in his village and wants to motivate the youth into embracing farming. He has already started a radio show dubbed Nazzikuno Baana Beeka, talking about African tradition, on community radios in Villa Maria and the neighbouring parishes.
Who is Kian Banks?
Kian Banks is a singer, composer, writer, and producer at Record Art Studios. He captures his fans’ attention with lateral and para-rhymes which he puts out in Luganda mixed with English.
He broke into the limelight in 2012 when he released songs such as Ngenda Mengo, Bazambogo and Munaku Kaama.
Banks became more popular when he released a collabo dubbed Night And Day with King Saha in 2013 and Freedom with Shidy Stylo.
In 2016, the rapper released two other collabos, Africa and Taliyo with Henry Tigan, and later outed solo projects; Bali Mukutya, Kabaka Wange, Mama and several more.
