Bruce Melodie is doing well lately. He has arrived. Even a blind man can see that the glow of his skin is more vibrant. Bruce Melodie is doing Rwanda and Coca and R&B music proud on continental TV. I hope that Yvan Buravan is watching the dude’s every step. What this can only mean is that Bruce sings good. Babu, the portable but deep-voiced Comedy Knights funny guy is the best when it comes to asking people to give a round of applause so let Babu go right ahead and do the same for Melodie … The wave of success dude has been riding lately makes me arrive at the simple conclusion he is now rich. The reason Bruce is now richer and more famous is because there is power in a hit and, needless to stress it, Ikinya is a hit. One of the qualities of a true hit is that it spawns other hits, either from other musicians riding the on the riddim and melody of the hit, and sometimes even from the same musician. Case in point; Ntidukina. A big hit also makes many young people wannabe musicians –they wannabe like the hit maker and also rock it big one day. Ikinya is a hit because it has gone a long way in disproving the popular but unfounded notion among haters of Rwandan music in places like Kampala and Nairobi, that Rwandan artists “only do Zouk music”. Ikinya is many things wrapped in one; Dancehall, Afro dancehall, Igisope-dancehall … In fact, the song refuses to be boxed into one genre. It is igisope-dancehall, if there ever was such a genre; its drum line, though computer programmed, is thick, juicy, bouncy, balmy and organic. To his credit, Bruce Melodie sings good on this one. He does not shout, as is increasingly the case whenever local artists make an attempt at a danceable song. In the song, the musician seems to talk to you, in person, like you were in the same room. Without a doubt, the other strength of this song lies in its easy sing-along appeal and dance-ability. One of the qualities of a good dancehall song is it must have a solid baseline and what, in dancehall parlance is called the ‘kick’. Kick is that aspect of a song’s instrumentation that makes you want to jump and spread your legs like a beer-inebriated maniac whenever it plays. This has led to a situation whereby every day, tens of both upcoming and experienced musicians from Rwanda and the East African region are asking someone for Bruce Melodie’s Whatssap number. Others want the number of the producer of Ikinya instead.
