JAK-V

artist, producer, performer, writer, creative director, singer, rapper

Born in Jinja and raised in Namutumba, Uganda, in a Christian household alongside his older sister and three younger brothers, he is the son of two parents who met in Jinja in the early 1990s while involved in the performing arts. Shortly after his birth in 1999, he moved with his parents to the UK for a year, during which they studied community counselling and family therapy. He credits his artistic roots to his parents, which have influenced his inclination toward deeply introspective, personal, vulnerability-driven, and concept-heavy styles of performing arts.

Alongside his wife, whom he met in 2018 at Bushfire Secondary School and married in 2022, they have lived in Bugiri, Iganga, Entebbe, and Kira, and now reside in Jinja with their son.

Best known early works include Akwetaaga (2014), Time (2014), co-written with his father, Brother Sam Kitalya, and Njagala (2015).

After a ten-year hiatus focused on writing strictly music and film, he returned in April 2026 with a three-album trilogy: JOZIE (April 8, 2026), LIGHT (April 9, 2026), and DANCE (April 30, 2026), alongside the 28-minute nonlinear visual S3QU3NC3S, released a few hours after LIGHT.

Official artist channel: https://youtube.com/@itsjakv

Born Joseph Andrew Kitalya-Victor, JAK-V is an alternative artist, producer, and creative director from Jinja, Uganda. His sound blends rap, singing, and spoken word with cinematic synth-driven production, moving between spoken-word minimalism, melodic grooves, sharp rap delivery, and experimental sound design.

Rooted in vulnerability, resilience, and human connection through a Christ-centered lens, his music is shaped as emotional vignettes exploring faith, meaning, and lived experience.

He leads Ajakvictactic, a performing arts program under Uganda Family Resource Link’s Bushfire Children’s Home, developing creativity and faith in children and youth through music, dance, drama, and spoken word.

Formerly Salvix Music Avenue and God’s Cubs Outta Tribe Called Judah—Ajakvictactic has evolved into a multidisciplinary aesthetic universe where music, clothing, film, and writing exist in one cohesive visual world.

There are bands you listen to, and then there are bands that raise you.

For me, Hillsong—especially UNITED—was never just music in the background. It was the soundtrack to becoming. Long before I understood production, songwriting, or even my own voice, I understood what I felt when those songs played. There was something honest about it. Something that didn’t try too hard, yet somehow said everything.

I still remember a moment around 2008, standing in church, almost stepping into a cover of “From The Inside Out.” I didn’t take that step—but somehow, that moment never left me. It became one of those quiet “what ifs” that follow you, not as regret, but as a marker of how deeply something has already shaped you.

Over the years, music grew bigger for me. The world got louder. Names got larger—Bieber, Konshens, Kendrick, The Weeknd—artists who define eras and dominate stages. And yet, if I’m being honest, none of that ever replaced what Hillsong meant to me. My version of “I made it” was never about awards or charts. It was always something simpler, and somehow bigger: standing on a stage, sharing a moment, connected to the same spirit that once reached me.

That’s why this ending feels different.

Because when Hillsong, as we knew it, began to fade and fracture, it didn’t just feel like a band breaking up. It felt like the closing of a chapter I never got to step fully into. A quiet kind of mourning—not just for what was, but for what could have been.

And maybe that’s the hardest part to accept: that some versions of things don’t come back. Some lineups, some seasons, some sounds—they exist exactly once, and then they become memory.

But memory isn’t nothing.

Those songs still live. Not just on playlists, but in people—in the way we write, the way we listen, the way we chase meaning in music. What they built didn’t disappear; it scattered, it evolved, it found new voices.

Maybe the dream was never just to stand with them.

Maybe it was to carry forward what they gave us—to create something that reaches someone else the way they reached me.

So this isn’t just goodbye.

It’s thank you.

For the songs. Mostly from one of my top five favorite albums of all time, Of Dirt and Grace.

For the moments I didn’t realize were shaping me.

For the dream that still, in a different form, refuses to die.

To Joel Houston — thank you for your creative direction that’s inspired me to bring the same spirit into Bushfire Children Ambassadors through Ajakvictactic.

To Jad Gillies — thank you for always showing love to my song covers.

To Benjamin Tennikoff — thank you for assuring me that the instrument I picked up at 8 years old is one of the greatest ever created.

To TAYA — who would’ve thought you’d be in the same conversations as Darlene and Brooke? Here we are. I’m sure they’re proud of you.

To Simon Kobler — if we ever shared a stage, I’d be up there banging those cymbals with my fingers like Matt Crocker and JD do.

To Benjamin William Hastings — your voice will always echo in my ears, just as it does with David Ware and Aodhan King.

To the guitarists — Nigel Hendroff, Jihea Oh, Dylan Thomas, and Michael Guy Chislett — if I don’t see at least one of you, something just feels off. May God Bless the Hands that Pluck those Strings.

~ Vision ~To Be a Leading Program of Local and International Repute in the Provision of Celebrated Performing Arts

~ Goal ~To Offer Free Opportunities to Unconventional Music, Dance & Drama enthusiasts while Nurturing them into Creators that Restore Lives through Performing Arts

~ Mission ~Restored Relationships with God, Self and Existing Communities