Whenever there is a big date on the Kigali social events scene, it’s always my duty to bring you up to speed, not only on the nitty-gritty of the particular event, but also some wild track here and there. So today we shall talk about Isaano. That’s right –the four-years-going-and-still-counting Isaano Festival of the Arts. But more on that later. I mentioned ‘wild track’ somewhere in the opening sentence, but do you really have an idea what this is? Wild track is when, in journalism, the writer is allowed to employ figments of his creative imagination to extend the story beyond the usual journalism-school scope of answering the what, where, when, and who about a story. When a writer decides to feed you, esteemed reader on wild track like I’m doing now, it means that they do not first beg for permission or guidelines from the editor before they write. They just go ahead and do it. It’s when I get to give you a piece of my mind about a particular subject without necessarily having to meekly follow all the dull and obsolete rules of writing as is taught in media school. That’s why when Senegalese –American rapper Akon, who sings like he has constipation visited us in late July last year, I had all the facts and light trivia to feed you on. I did not restrict myself to only the energy deals he had come to prospect with the decision-makers at RDB and MININFRA. Rather, I went the extra (and dutiful) mile, furnishing you with information about the type of earring he dons on his right ear lobe and why he does so, but most importantly, how Akon walks with an almost rebellious, forward-leaning bounce, and how this bounce makes him look like a ghetto hot stepper-turned high-end thug. It was business as usual when, more recently, Jamaican dancehall artiste Konshens visited to help us usher in this new year. We went beyond the mundane, to inform you about how Konshens is in that unenviable position where he finds himself being described as both “handsome” and “beautiful” or “sweet” by his legion of female fans. So back to Isaano: This festival is brought to us by Kanobana Judo, the man who is an expert at peeling off smiles as if his lips were made of the same material as the skin of a ripe sweet banana. In fact, I sometimes sit and wonder to myself how many millions of smiles Judo has peeled off his lips ever since he became a igitaramo promoter. But the crowning moment was meeting soulful singer Shanel Nirere at the tail-end of Isaano. The only problem about meeting Shanel that rainy Friday mid-morning is that, for the one hour or so that the interview lasted, and whenever our eyes locked in contact, I felt hungry. I won’t tell you why I felt hungry every time my eyes settled on Shanel’s because are you really that daft?Of course not.
