‘Johnny come lately ‘on the Arts

On Monday, July 23, I read an article in The New Times about a schools talent festival involving 57 schools. The whole thing had been organised by Forum for African Women Educationalists (FAWE) and would last three days.For some reason, the piece sent me on a mental detour to my primary school days. I remember the music, dance and drama competitions like they happened yesterday.Just to set the record straight, I was no great chorister. In fact my singing was so atrocious, I got punished for it! The choirmaster constantly thought I was deliberately messing around! My dancing was average and my acting; well let’s just say neither Nollywood nor Hillywood would come calling even if they were desperate.It was sheer luck that I ever made it to the school choir in the first place. The selection criterion was rather peculiar. You either had outright exceptional talent or your class performance was in the top quartile. Needless to say I scraped through on the second consideration.What an opportunity! We visited other schools, playing all sorts of traditional musical instruments like the African long drum, the tube fiddle and xylophones; we performed dances with exotic names like Amagunju, orunyege and imbalu. Those were great times to be an African child. Forget your Nintendo Wii, playstation or Xbox; that was real fun!Sadly my day dream had to come to an end. I began to think about the state of the arts in Rwanda and particularly in the eyes of the youth growing up in Kigali. For many years, we mourned the absence of enthralling TV programming and engaging Radio. Perhaps what we saw as a bane has been our boon.At no other time in the last 18 years has Kigali felt more culturally vibrant. The recent sprouting of musical talent is self evident in the ongoing Primus Guma Guma show. Performing art groups like Mashirika are making their presence continuously felt by staging epic performances such as the one on the 17th commemoration of the Genocide at Stade Amahoro in 2011. The attention to detail in their costume designs and the emotional depths you are taken to are a hallmark of Mashirika performances.A year ago, another brilliant idea was born. The brain child of two literary talents Betty Tushabe and Diana Mpyisi, spoken word Rwanda guarantees cultural connoisseurs a regular fix of the good stuff. From poetry to music it’s always like Forrest Gump’s box of chocolates “you never know what you gonna get”.This Rwandan cultural renaissance came full circle for me last Friday. I inadvertently wobbled into a stand-up comedy show at the Ishyo Arts Centre in Kacyiru. On the way to meet a friend for a drink, I saw a young crowd making a beeline for the small hall next to shooters’ lounge where I was headed.Curiosity got the better of me and so I joined the queue to the hall. After I parted with Rwf2000, I found myself a seat and tried to follow the proceedings. It took me a while to catch up. A very unique and Rwandan style of comedy was being performed.First hurdle, three languages were being used simultaneously; French, English and Kinyarwanda. Second hurdle; background info was required to get the punch line to the jokes! That said everyone around me was in stitches. A few minutes later, I too was in stitches, thankfully Kfm’s Arthur from the “A & A” show was also performing. Like me, he seemed to be most comfortable with English. Soon I was laughing at even the French jokes. I put it all down to the animated nature of the performances. The show was worth every cent of the Rwf2000 I coughed up at the entrance. My friend did eventually turn up and we had that drink at shooters lounge but when I got home, my head was buzzing more from the comedy than the drink.Reading Stephen Kinzer’s book “A thousand Hills” a rather dour image of Rwandans today emerges. In chapter 14 he asserts that ‘’A good Rwandan must always be serious and correct. It’s a stern ethos, born of both tradition and the crucible of modern Rwanda.” While this may be true for our parent’s generation, what is to be seen amongst young people such as the crowd at ‘Comedy Nayiti’ on 20th July is a slightly different ethos, a more fun ethos.Like all good art, the fans need not be told twice. The crowds at Kigali’s culture events are getting bigger day by day. It’s no longer a scene for the artsy lot, ordinary youth of all walks of life are attending concerts, film premieres, beauty pageants and fashion shows just for their value as fun outings. This is good news for the artists. They are guaranteed an audience. It’s not necessarily great news for the arts. For what this all amounts to is a bit of window shopping. What the arts in Rwanda need is some serious investors.Historically where the arts have thrived, there were always benevolent men and women of means who bankrolled the talent. Think of Florentine art and the support it received from the Medici family and Sir Christopher Wren who built London’s St. Paul’s cathedral with King Charles II’s unstinting support.Artists are generally not renowned for their financial fortitude. What they usually need is someone to take care of the bills while they are in their formative years and sooner than later they will repay this faith with expressions of their talent that can eventually be commercialised and better still, stand the test of time.Rwandans of means, please put your money where your mouths are; invest in the arts.

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‘Johnny come lately ‘on the Arts