WOMAD

Cecile Kayirebwa

From Rwanda

2001 Biography"Little bird of Buganza, be quiet. I will rub you with perfume. The time to hate you is as far as the moon. The time to love you so close." So sings the queen of Rwandan music, Cecile Kayirebwa. Buganza is a beautiful hilly region in north eastern Rwanda where Cecile worked as a social worker in the 1960s. It was there that she formed a choir to interpret traditional Rwandan songs and preserve a musical culture that was fast evaporating in the white heat of modernisation. In her youth she was influenced by the hymns and chants favoured by her staunchly Catholic parents and by French pop stars like Johnny Halliday and Francoise Hardy.With the abolition of the old Tutsi monarchy and independence from Belgium in 1960, Cecile realised that an extremely rich and beautiful musical culture was in danger of disappearing. For the next forty years Cecile worked tirelessly both at home in Rwanda and in Belgium, where she lived for twenty years, to share the love of her country’s music with others and to heal the pangs of homesickness felt by exiled Rwandese all over the world.Her music isn’t an exercise in cultural purity however. It encompasses all the musical influences which played a part in her life and the result is a rich, polyphonic and multi-instrumental style, well showcased on her 1994 release on Globestyle Records entitled ‘Rwanda’. All cultures have recognised the healing power of music and if there’s anyone who can contribute significantly to the long tortuous process of rescuing Rwanda from the trauma of genocidal hatred then it must be Cecile Kayirebwa.Biography by Andy Morgan, May 2001Short BiographyFrom Rwanda in central Africa, Cecile Kayirebwa's gentle, melodic warmth draws directly from the musical heritage of her Tutsi birth. "Extraordinary, beautiful songs infused with a beguiling calm..." (Folk Roots Magazine)May 2001