Mighty Popo has a dream. The Ottawa-based musician is organizing an outdoor music festival in Rwanda that he hopes will bring the spirit of a Canadian music festival to his Central African homeland.
KigaliUp will be a family-friendly event that takes place in a park in Kigali, the capital, in September. The lineup includes the Juno-winning Canadian hiphop artist Shad, blues singer Shakura S’Aida, Popo and other musicians from Canada and Africa.
The festival has been in the works for years, inspired by the folk festivals that have had such a strong influence on Jacques “Popo” Murigande, who was born in Burundi to Tutsi refugees from Rwanda. He immigrated to Canada as a teenager and settled in Ottawa, where he was welcomed in the music scene. He released his first album in 1997; the latest, Gakonda, was nominated for a Juno Award.
“To me, the Canadian music festivals made me who I am, really,” said the singer-songwriter-guitarist during a backstage interview last weekend at Westfest. “They made me realize how healthy it is to do workshops with other musicians and to learn from them. If you’re open enough, you end up developing this art form that you really weren’t expecting.”
What’s more, Murigande has always been concerned about African children losing touch with their musical roots. The youngsters tend to idolize American rappers and stay away from learning to play instruments.
For many, their notion of making music is limited to singing or rapping along to a computer- generated track.
Murigande, who has a two-yearold son in Rwanda, wants to change the culture to bring back an awareness of creating music on instruments. The young people he meets at Canadian festivals talk about seeing him play when they were children, and how it made them want to learn an instrument and become involved in community events.
“How great it would be to create something like that in Rwanda, where the kids can grow up having some kind of reference to music, and somewhere they can really look forward to going to every year,” he says. “With this festival I’m copying (Bluesfest’s) Blues in the Schools program. Eventually we will go the schools and present music to them, and show the kids live musicians. ‘This is how the music is made: First there are the humans, the players of instruments. Not machines.’ ”
Not surprisingly, the biggest challenge is funding. Murigande has raised about $40,000 toward the $150,000 required to put on a oneday event, but it’s a slow process and he’s had to scale it back from the three-day festival he originally envisioned. The volunteer organizing team includes well-connected Canadians such as former CBC Radio broadcaster Tom Metuzals and the Calgary Folk Festival’s artistic director Kerry Clarke, who accompanied Popo to Rwanda in February to check out the site.
“It’s beautiful,” Clarke said in a phone interview. “It’s everything we’d want in a folk festival site. It’s lush, central and there’s lots of room for growth. I had heard that Rwanda was quite beautiful but I had no idea.”
Clarke first met Murigande several years ago when they were both serving on a Canada Council jury. They’ve been talking seriously about the Kigali festival for three years. The Calgary folkfest has already contributed more than $5,000 to the effort, while another $5,000 has come from the Edmonton Folk Festival. Cisco Ottawa Bluesfest has pledged $1,000, and an IndieGoGo. com campaign has raised almost $10,000 so far. Murigande is also performing benefit concerts to raise money, including one in Ottawa on Wednesday.
Clarke believes Popo not only has the initiative to make it happen, but also the connections in Canada and Rwanda. “He’s not just some Canadian landing in the country,” she says. “He has a long history in Rwanda. Popo has had such a good experience living in Canada and he loves Rwanda so I think it’s to meld the two experiences. Really, it’s just to give back.
“I think we all see that music festivals can be a very positive thing to bring to a country, and they can have a lot of other spinoffs in terms of education and gathering people together.”
The reaction in Kigali has been one of surprise. When Murigande went to the city for permission to use the site for a concert, officials thought the request was a mistake. Most public events in Kigali are held in the stadium. A music festival in a park aimed at families is a foreign concept.
“When I went to rent the park, they said, ‘Are you crazy? Music in here?’ ” Murigande says.
“But music should happen there, not in the stadium, where it’s VIP over there and soccer poles everywhere. I want your kids to be safe in the park and I want them to feel comfortable and feel like they belong to this Rwanda that we’re trying to build.”
source, Ottawa Citizen
Leave a Reply