In addition to helping the people of
Mpigi make a living while learning the art of
guitar building, Duncan is also providing a
sort of Business 101 class. He teaches his students/employees about writing emails, using
Microsoft applications, and hiring student
managers. Once enough villagers have been
trained, they’ll be able to run the business
themselves. “The idea is that they’ll be able
to start their own manufacturing company,
independent of us,” says Duncan. “They’ll
actually own it and export the guitars, and
we’ll distribute and sell them for them.”
Roots in the ’80s
So how exactly did Duncan’s involvement
with a remote African village come about?
It all goes back to his youth. In 1983, at
the age of 13, Duncan watched millions
dying on television as the worst famine in a
century hit the country of Ethiopia, eventually
claiming more than 400,000 lives and
inspiring relief efforts like the 1985 Live
Aid concerts. “It struck me as something
that was just incredibly wrong. How could
civilized human beings sit by and watch?”
Duncan recalls wondering. “Now, it’s a very
complicated problem, but to a 13-year-old
boy it just didn’t make sense. And so Africa
has always played on my heart.”
Duncan felt he could be of most help by
educating villagers and empowering them
to become self-sufficient. “Teaching a skill
that they can use to support their families
for the rest of their lives is much better than
some kind of welfare handout,” he says.
So in 2005, he made a decision to take his
eponymous Jay Duncan guitars to Uganda.
It took two years of planning to get
the school off the ground. During this
time, Duncan spent five months building
seven prototype guitars, selling them off
for $2,500 each to raise the needed funds.
“That was less than half of what they’re
worth,” he says, noting that, at the time,
his Jay Duncan guitars were selling for
$5,000 each despite having a value closer to
$7,500. “But that was our seed money for
the trade school, and we’ve really leveraged
it.” After three research trips to the village,
Duncan and two colleagues rented the tiny
cement house that would become their
workspace and set up shop. It was a simple
dwelling, but it had electricity and plenty
of natural light. “For houses there,” Duncan
says, “it was pretty nice.”
DuncanAfrica guitars are made largely with primitive hand tools. Recently, the school received a table saw,
but prior to that the most advanced pieces of equipment in the shop were an edge sander and a bandsaw.
Jay Duncan says that DuncanAfrica instruments’ tonal qualities come from a unique “double-X” bracing
system that allows the tone from the back and sides of the guitars to really resonate.They met with the local elders in the village
and organized an information night for
prospective students, who filled out applications
to enroll in Duncan’s guitar-making
trade school. After choosing and training
about a dozen villagers for this pilot project,
Duncan returned to his home in Canada
in 2007, leaving the students to make their
first trial run of guitars without his supervision.
Four months later, four finished guitars
arrived on his doorstep. “Seeing those guitars
meant, basically, that it was a success,” he
recalls. “They made them without any help.
Behind getting married and having my kids,
that was one of the best days of my life.”
Best Laid Plans ...
It hasn’t exactly been easy going for Duncan
and his upstart. Although this year they
were finally able to move into a larger,
2,400-square-foot building, it’s taken longer
than anticipated to find the right individuals
and get them trained to Duncan’s exceptionally
high standards (“I’ll saw a guitar in
half mid-production if it isn’t coming out
right,” he says). Commodities like computers
are alien to most Ugandans, and there
are obvious barriers in verbal communication,
as well. “Technically, English is the
first language of Uganda,” Duncan says,
“but not everyone speaks it, so it’s very difficult
to teach.”
As could be expected, progress is slow
but steady. “We’re about a quarter of the
way there,” he says, noting that they need
to convert 30 students into experts in order
for the business to run smoothly without
him. Although they’ve trained close to 15
thus far, results vary and retention has been
relatively low. “We’ve had four or five students
come through who were just stellar,”
he says. “And we’ve had two or three who were just terrible. The rest are somewhere
in between.” Currently, the school has eight
student employees making guitars under the
guidance of “master student” Simon Adyaka,
who apprenticed under Duncan’s first protégé,
Mwesige David. David was Duncan’s
go-to man from the beginning and manager
of the school in its early years up until last
February, when he succumbed to cancer.
Losing David—Africa’s best guitar maker
thus far, according to Duncan—was tragic.
“He was the kind of guy who could do
everything, and those people are really rare,”
Duncan says. “He was amazing, not just as a
woodworker but in the community.”
Broken Road
Student Isaac Mukaasa
shows off a DuncanAfrica model
with a Broken Road inlay.
Luthier Jay Duncan came up with
his “Broken Road” inlay design
during the formative years of his
charity, DuncanAfrica. He was living
in Africa, bored and sick with the
flu at the time, when inspiration hit.
“I thought to myself, ‘I’m going to
make a fancy guitar.’” He used koa,
mugavu, maple, cow bone, and
ebony to create the inlay pattern
that lines the headstock, rosewood
neck, and fretboard of this Selah
OM-CR from the Suubi series.
But students of David, including
Adyaka, have stepped up and assumed more
responsibility in order for the guitar making
to continue. David’s widow, Olive, is still
very involved with the charity, overseeing
the business side, accounting, and other
administrative duties.
Asked how one teaches luthiery nuances
such as strutting and fret positioning to
someone who’s never seen a standard firstworld
guitar before, Duncan admits it’s
difficult to show the craftspeople of Mpigi
the sorts of bar-setting reference points that
we take for granted. “The learning curve is
really steep. There are no Taylors for sale in
Uganda,” says Duncan of the U.S. flattop
brand famous for its immaculate fretting and finish work. And, naturally, there are
no CNC machines to provide the kind
of automated accuracy and repeatability
found at so many other shops, both large
and small. Instead, students use hand tools
to carve out the necks, braces, fretboards,
and other delicate pieces that make up
each instrument. Until the spring of this
year, when Duncan sent over a table saw,
the two fanciest pieces of equipment in the
shop were an edge sander and a bandsaw.
“Rumor has it, the guys threw a little
party and invited the landlord over to
celebrate last year when we sent the edge
sander,” says Duncan. “It’s funny what gets
woodworkers excited, eh?”
Locally sourced near the DuncanAfrica school,
this beautifully grained mugavu wood sounds
like a cross between mahogany and koa. It has
a golden, luminous appearance and yields complex
midrange tones.The Goods
Duncan was in love with guitars long
before he fell in love with Africa. The 43-year-old started playing at age 8 and
taught himself lutherie when he was in his
20s. He got his official start working for
Canadian guitar maker Larrivée in the late
’90s and into the early 2000s, during which
time he started his own Jay Duncan guitars,
specializing in OMs and dreadnaughts. For
DuncanAfrica, though, he’s expanded his
product line to also include a jumbo, and
he has plans to add a parlor model later this
year. “I think for most guitar players, there’s
just something sexy about a big ol’ jumbo,”
says Duncan, adding that he anticipates the
parlor will be “super popular” as well.
Apart from the four different guitars
available—the Selah (OM), the Jubilee
(dreadnaught), the 1962 (jumbo), and the
Pearl (parlor)—players have a choice of
three different series at varying price points.
The newest and most wallet-friendly line
is the Jericho, which features dreadnaught
and OM models in local woods like
mahogany or mugavu. (Sourced near the
school, African mugavu has been described
as a cross between mahogany and koa.)
Starting at $779, guitars in the Jericho line
come with a passive pickup and gigbag, as opposed to the deluxe hard case, which
comes standard with the two other lines.
The middle-of-the-road Suubi series
starts around $1,400 and offers chrome
Gotoh 16:1 tuners, a one-piece mahogany
neck, and a bridge, bridge pins, and fretboard
of ebony. “That’s your standard, great
guitar,” Duncan says.
“Rumor has it, the guys threw a little party and
invited the landlord over to celebrate last year
when we sent the edge sander,” says Duncan.
“It’s funny what gets woodworkers excited, eh?”
The third and priciest series, the Artisan,
is special in more ways than one. Beginning
at $2,400, these instruments aren’t built
on the assembly line but entirely crafted
by master student Adyaka. Artisan guitars
incorporate gold Gotoh 510 Series tuners
and feature attractive mother-of-pearl
inlays. Wood choices for the Suubi and
Artisan lines vary from model to model
and are slightly customizable, but expect
the highest quality Indian rosewood and
local woods like ebony, spruce, mahogany,
mugavu, and maple.
DuncanAfrica headstocks, like the one on this Suubi series model, are
more evocative of an archtop than a traditional acoustic.
The mid-priced
instruments in DuncanAfrica’s three guitar lines are found in the Suubi series.
“Suubi means ‘hope’ in Uganda,” luthier Jay Duncan says.
The Tones
Singer/songwriter Dave Siverns has played
a fair share of DuncanAfrica guitars, and he
says the quality of their dark woods makes
for a unique, resonating sound. In the past few years, he’s owned both rosewood and
mugavu OMs, and recorded in Nashville
with a friend’s mugavu dreadnaught.
“None of them were overly bright or
Taylor-ish,” he says of the tone, but he
noted that the DuncanAfrica mugavu
guitars he’s played sat beautifully in
band mixes. “Think vintage Martin or
Gibsons,” he says. “I actually restrung a
’60s Gibson—the model eludes me—when
tracking in Nashville, and I compared it to
the mugavu ‘Jubilee’ dread. There was no
comparison—the DuncanAfrica sounded better in every way.” When prodded, Siverns has trouble comparing his DAs to
any modern guitars. “They’re a bit louder
and richer in general, and feel more broken
in on the first play. I’d probably compare
them most to some of the smaller,
handbuilt guys like Collings, but with a
bit more of a rustic feel and sound.”
When asked what’s different about his
6-strings, Duncan prefaces the explanation with, “I am a tone freak," before going on to explain that many of the
instruments’ tonal qualities are due to a
unique “double-X” bracing system that
he says allows the tone from the back and
sides to really shine. East Indian rosewood
gives a wide tonal range with strong highs
and lows, while Western flamed maple
lends a gorgeous aesthetic and a warmer
tone that Duncan says is “almost vintage-sounding, right out of the box. We also use Ugandan mahogany and sapele, which
makes for a nice, warm body with a bit
of tinkle in the high mids, and the local
mugavu has a powerful midrange.”
The Future
Duncan says his school in Mpigi has averaged
25 guitars annually, but he’s seen a
significant increase in demand over the
last year or so, with 35 guitars being completed
in 2012, and 20 orders in a twomonth
span this year. He has high hopes
for an eventual output of 200 instruments
per month and enough profits for the
Mpigi community to put toward things
like health care, education, and entrepreneurial
initiatives.
With his distinctive-sounding guitars,
and inspiringly selfless attitude, Duncan
can’t be surprised that word of mouth
has carried the DuncanAfrica story across
the globe. “We’re asked all the time to
take our project to different parts of the
world—North Korea, Guatemala, India,
and, last week, it was Russia.” But while
Duncan loves the idea of expanding his
reach to other countries or continents, he
says he’s got some caveats before taking
his shop/school model somewhere else.
“The money would have to be there,” he
says. “We set up DuncanAfrica with absolutely
no money, and it’s been an incredibly
hard seven years because of that. But
if the financial backing were in place, we
would gladly go somewhere else and do
something similar.”
