From the streets to the studio

Moses Mutabazi aka Mr. Brown has defied all odds. The former street kid is the voice behind the famous RPF Ikotanyi hit, a song he composed during the parliamentary campaigns this year.

Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Moses Mutabazi aka Mr. Brown has defied all odds. The former street kid is the voice behind the famous RPF Ikotanyi hit, a song he composed during the parliamentary campaigns this year.

He beat well-known artistes like: Erick Sendeli of the Uransize fame and Sergeant Robert Kabera, the Army Jazz Band lead singer to claim a prize contested for the first time.

His song—RPF- Inkotanyi is part of a 6-song album.  The other song that attracts attention on his album is Gira Inka Munyarwanda—composed to spear head the government policy of providing a cow for each poor household.

Mutabazi who has recorded all his songs at Naro Road Productions in Kigali has also composed one Ikawa y’urwanda,  a song promoting coffee  production in the country.

At 23, he has had his fair share of agony, but the soft spoken upcoming star still enjoys the pleasure that comes along with hard-work.

Born in Uganda, Mutabazi has never seen any of his parents but surprisingly still hopes to see them, one day.

"When I was a little kid, my mother abandoned me. I was brought up by my grandmother.

She also told me that my father had come to Rwanda during the 1994 liberation struggle,” Mutabazi explains.

Mutabazi took a hard decision and boarded a bus to Rwanda, a country he had never been to.

"Fortunately I was only ten years old. I did not get problems at the boarder as a returnee,” Mutabazi recalls with a sigh of relief.

Amazingly Mutabazi endured all the frigid and harsh conditions that are characteristic of street life and at one time he owned a gun for seven years as a high way robber.

"I used different drugs on the street, threatened and snatched bags from people until I got tired and gave up all that nasty lifestyle,” he reminisces.

He informs me that it was after he almost lost all hope of ever seeing his poor dad that he met his ‘rich’ dad.

Ends