by Dorian Hayes
Dorian Hayes works with Inshuti-UK, an organization dedicated to promoting friendly ties between the peoples of the United Kingdom and the Central African nation of Rwanda. He submitted this account of African music and dance in Rwanda in 2003.

Bouncing along this red road, our jeep's tires kick up a plume of earth the color of sienna, rich and cracked. We are driving through a landscape of rusts and coppers, earthy colors scratched across a palette of greens. Around us on both sides, huge surreal banana plants crowd the road, their massive leaves like the sails of windmills. Up here in the northwest of Rwanda, the countryside is vertiginous: there are fertile plains, marshes, winding rivers; but above all, there are hills. These are the "milles collines " of national legend, countless musozi as far as the eye can see, the mountains, and distant peaks of the Virunga volcano range, which together account for a good deal of Rwanda's national pride. They feature prominently on the bank notes and lend their name to the one truly upscale hotel in the capital, Kigali. It is by these hills, rising like the turrets of a natural fortress, that one may immediately distinguish the landscape of Rwanda from neighboring Uganda.

If the hills are a source of national pride, they have also been the economic mainstay for thousands of family units, or rugo, since well before the colonial era. All over this country, there are apparently un-peopled vistas that, on closer inspection, reveal clusters of men, women, and children, swinging huge farm tools, cutting into this already over-cultivated country. Before the genocide, Rwanda was one of the most densely-populated and heavily-farmed countries in Africa. Even now, away from the towns, everybody seems to be working on some ancestral small-holding, every available acre appears to be in constant steady rotation.

Ballet Inganzo

We are heading for Janja, a tiny hill-top village in the district of Gatonde, in the province of Ruhengeri. Our visit to Janja is part of a larger fact-finding mission in Rwanda. As musicians and writers based in South London, myself and the other members of Inshuti-UK (lit. "friendship UK"; pron. "In-chuti") are here to explore the possibility of creating lasting links with a group of teenage musicians and dancers called Ballet Inganzo based in the provincial capital Ruhengeri town. A dazzling riot of color and sound, tightly choreographed and highly ritualized, the Rwandan ballet, remains an unknown quantity in the outside world. Even among experts in the field, Rwanda is widely thought to be one of the few African countries without a national music, a place where the streets are far more likely to pulse to the imported sounds of Congolese soukous and Burundian pop. And yet, from our time both in the capital and in the border province of Ruhengeri, where the Congolese influence might be expected to be strongest, it is clear that the indigenous ballet is a thriving art form. Everywhere in Rwanda, from the face of the 1,000 franc bank note to the national TV station, are to be seen the dances of Intore (the warrior dance) and Ingoma (the drum ensemble) performed by a new generation for whom the ballet offers a way, not only to articulate feelings of pride, power, hope, and love but also to overcome the traumas of their recent past.

Established three years ago by local youth leader François Nkinzehwiki and musical prodigy Alfred Sibomana, Ballet Inganzo is one of many groups operating in the Ruhengeri area. During the three weeks of our trip to the country, we saw three such groups perform, from the 70-strong Ballet Inkoramutima za Kristu (lit. "beloved of Christ") directed by Father Placide Duhirimana at Janja, to Inganzo themselves enthralling us with performances at several venues, to a small group of primary school children in the village of Nyange who donned huge white manes of hair and brandished frightening home-made spears or icumu, and shared their elders' expression of fierce defiance as they danced a ballet with the Kalisimbi volcano swathed in mist behind them. Against all expectations, we discovered an indigenous culture that is vibrant and rich, and young musicians who are as keen to learn and refine their art as any hopeful saxophonist or drummer in London or New York.

The town of Ruhengeri is situated in the foothills of the Virunga mountains, at an altitude of around 2,000 meters above sea level. With its rough two-lane thoroughfare, leafy, paved suburb where local dignitaries and foreign aid agencies reside, and two marketplaces, one apparently meant for the sole purpose of selling an impossibly wide range of potatoes, Ruhengeri is the very model of a dusty frontier town. Most of the houses, shops, and bars are improvised from mud bricks and corrugated iron, while very few have reliable electricity or running water. At night, road-blocks are installed at both ends of the town by soldiers from the local barracks. The authorities and inhabitants alike live in fear of a return to the days of border incursions by the Interahamwe and other Hutu extremist groups based in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

Comprised of 35-40 youngsters from Ruhengeri town and the surrounding area, Ballet Inganzo is one of the most accomplished groups in the province. During our time in Rwanda, we heard mention of other provincial outfits in Kibuye, Cyangugu, Kigali, as well as another group called Ikenimba in Ruhengeri. The members of Ballet Inganzo largely hail from the loose chain of shacks and huts northeast of the town center known as Gashangiro. As is sadly true of so many in this region--and in the country as whole--their personal odysseys tend to describe a tragic arc of extreme violence and bereavement at an early age. A frighteningly high proportion of the teenagers in the group are former refugees, many of them returning only recently from the horrific camps of Goma in war-torn DRC.

For these youngsters, the Ballet fulfills multiple functions: the regular rehearsals provide a structure sorely lacking in a country where education for all is still a distant hope. Many of the members have also found a kind of solace in creative expression, which, in the words of fifteen year-old Marie-Josée, has allowed them to "forget some of [our] personal troubles and the troubles of [our] country". When we spoke to Alfred Sibomana in the Gira Amahoro bar on the outskirts of Ruhengeri town, it became clear that, at the age of twenty-three, he is a young man with a unique sense of vision and responsibility. Alfred has been playing the ingoma and dancing since he was nine years old. Sadly, his secondary education was curtailed by the outbreak of civil war in 1994, during which he lost his father and several other family members. For Alfred, leading Ballet Inganzo has been a pivotal experience; it has "enabled [him] to be known" and to exercise a degree of influence over both his own life and that of the local community. He maintains that, "like anyone who plays guitar or drums, music helps me enjoy and to 'carry life' life with a different perspective." Moreover, as leader, Alfred evidently conceives his role as that of an elder or mentor within a group which, for many of its members, has become the nearest thing to a family unit they will ever know.

Having struggled against horrific personal odds, it is clear that Alfred has grown into an articulate young man with real potential to become an inspiring leader of his community. As such, he is undoubtedly the kind of person that Ballet founder François Nkinzehwiki sought out as he began to put the group together in 2000. Looking back now with evident pride, François recalls the founding aims of the project. Unlike most people in Rwanda for whom the genocide of '94 remains a taboo subject, François avoids euphemism. Indeed, he is quite explicit about his desire to reconcile the country's three socio-ethnic groups--Tutsi, Hutu, and Twa--within the micro-community of Ballet Inganzo. In this way, Inganzo reflects Rwanda's pre-colonial past when court musicians and "ritualists" (Abiru) would pay tribute to the Mwami and the royal family.

For François, the Ballet offered an opportunity to "collect the three groups under the umbrella of a national culture". After many years of traumatic and dehumanizing experience, François believes that singing and playing in the Ballet allowed the members "to feel that they are again human and accepted". And he should know: before moving back to Ruhengeri, François worked as a teacher in the hellish camps of Goma. Moreover, Ballet Inganzo is not his only initiative. He is also the director of the Virunga Wildlife Clubs, a society established to educate young people from Ruhengeri and the neighboring province of Gisenyi in the principles of sustainable development and "green" farming methods. In a country of such huge population density where up to 90% of people live in rural areas, this kind of initiative is obviously of vital importance for the future.

CLAJERANG and Inshuti-UK

Another of François 's grands projets is CLAJERANG, a loose collective of local businessmen and worthies based in Ruhengeri. CLAJERANG was originally set up by François and his British friend, conservationist and erstwhile colleague of Dian Fossey, Ian Redmond. Now in its second year, the organization aims to promote friendship and cultural exchange between young people in Rwanda and the UK through a range of school partnerships, visits, donations, and the imminent creation of a center for Rwandan culture and education. Its acronymic French name says as much in shorthand. The first great success in the story of CLAJERANG and their British partners was a UK tour by Ballet Inganzo in the summer of 2002. In spite--or maybe because of--a very tight budget, frequent cultural misunderstandings, the lack of a common language, and some particularly heavy-handed bureaucracy on the African side, the tour was a triumph. Thanks to explosive concerts at the National Theatre, London, and the Rhythms of the World Festival in Hitchen, and scores of school workshops across the southwest, thousands of British fans were able to experience the magic, and seeming miracle, of Rwandan ballet at first hand.

Now, CLAJERANG have formalized ties with the British organizers of that tour (Inshuti-UK), to help generate interest and eventually develop a reliable market for Rwandan musicians and artists in the UK. This is why we have journeyed thousands of miles to Ruhengeri. Like the courageous vanguard of Ballet Inganzo who left their villages to battle with incredulous Ugandan border guards, and braved airplanes, underground trains, and London's roads for the first time, we were keen to experience the ballet in its proper environment, to meet the musicians and their families on home turf, to find out how they live, and what they hope for the future of cultural exchange between the two countries. Sadly, we have learned that these aspiring musicians face enormous problems on a daily basis: this is a land suffering the birth pains of representative democracy, a highly militarized land of enormous poverty, paranoia, and buried trauma. But it is also a land of great fertility and generosity, of hope and rare beauty, and a vast potential for development and even tourism.

As for the Ballet itself, there is huge potential in these young singers and dancers. For as long as many can remember, they have been refining their performance so that--from a Western perspective--it is now impressively tight and polished. Made up of a series of dances, or "jeux", some of which dramatize great battles in Rwandan history, while others emulate of the great horned sacred cows of the region, all accompanied by a choir and the mighty ingoma, Inganzo's version of the ballet has the power to captivate huge crowds at political rallies in Ruhengeri and British music festivals alike. And yet, there remain many questions to be answered regarding funding and resources--the drums themselves cost more to produce than one person's average annual salary here--, the possibility of musical independence and innovation, and the need for a full-time musical director to look after the interests of these vulnerable youngsters.

Janja

It is to find answers to some of these pressing questions that we are bouncing along the red road to Janja in a battered old 4x4. There are ten of us in all: François, who is navigating; the driver, whose name we never learn for sure; our two invaluable translators, Josephine and Aloys; Anicet, the master craftsman in whose workshop the drums used by all the local Ballets are built; a scattering of local worthies; and the three muzungu, or white men, of Inshuti-UK. En route to Janja, we stop to see Anicet's workshop and watch his nine sons hollowing out the trunks of umuvumu trees in which are believed to live the gihanga or local ancestors. These prepared trunks are first proofed against woodworm by dowsing them in cow's blood, before the rawhide skins are stretched taut over both ends. Leaving his workshop, Anicet himself strikes up a rhythm on the Ishakwe drum--lit. "the one that calls others"--while Aloys joins on the Ikiumuna (the Ishakwe's "younger brother"). All of a sudden we have become a drum parade, a ceremonial vehicle full of impassioned, singing faces and voices, conversations in Swahili and Kinyarwanda acquiring a new lyricism and depth.

As we drive deeper and deeper into a staggering landscape known locally as "the blessed country", each hair-pin bend reveals startling new panoramas. Around one such corner, we see for the first time the parish church of Janja, perched high above us at the summit of one of the milles collines. Janja is on the border of three provinces, Ruhengeri, Gitarama, and Gisenyi. This fertile land, also at the confluence of three rivers, feels very like the symbolic heart of Africa, squeezed between Tanzania, Uganda, Burundi, and the Congo.

On our arrival at the parish church, we are welcomed by Catholic priests and seminarians of ever-increasing seniority. Everyone except ourselves murmurs grace around the dining table. And yet here we are to be treated to a grand ballet: the full church choir singing and chanting traditional songs which pre-date the arrival of the German White Fathers by thousands of years, songs of war and heroism, accompanied by the beat of drums made from the trunks of centuries-old umuvumu trees. In this sense, the ballet represents an equatorial encounter between the cultures of north and south, where the rituals of Christianity meet the local god of Imana and his intermediaries.

The performance of Ballet Inkoramutima za Kristu, in the shade of a huge acacia tree in the magical garden at Janja, is a revelation. The extra numbers--this group has a thirty-strong choir, twelve dancers, and up to twenty drummers--make for an ensemble of tremendous power. As the dancers sing and stamp their feet in unison, they are lost for seconds at a time in clouds of red dust. This group makes use of other instruments beyond the more conventional drums and bells; there are pipes called umwirongi produce an eerie, almost psychedelic sound, and the ikembe, like the thumb pianos of West Africa but made in DRC by skilled members of the Batwa, or "pygmy" tribe. After nearly ninety minutes, the performance culminates in a spectacular ingoma farewell dance: twenty musicians drumming up a almighty storm that must surely audible over all of Rwanda's 1,000 hills.

Discussing this heart-stopping moment between ourselves afterwards, we agree that the Ballet at Janja would tear the roof off any concert hall in the world, such was its grace, precision, and power. According to Father Duhirimana, one difference between his group and the still-raw passion of Inganzo is that the musicians of Janja have a full-time musical director and choreographer who is able to a take a step back, assess, and even film the group's performances for future reference and rehearsals. Above all, the teenagers of Janja seem simultaneously fluid, and yet highly drilled and choreographed. Their stunning performance--surely the equal of a West End smash like STOMP! --is clearly the product of a massive investment of time and energy, and a shrewd deployment of meager resources. Inevitably, however, in a country with very little infrastructure and huge natural obstacles, Ballet Inkoramutima za Kristu are victims of their own success. Taking this show "on the road", together with twenty drums and all the costumes and other equipment, is somewhat akin to touring a seventy-piece Wagnerian orchestra; a logistical operation of Fitzcarraldo-like proportions.

It is for this reason that CLAJERANG and Inshuti-UK plan to attune Western ears to the Rwandan ballet through the relatively flexible medium of Ballet Inganzo. However, given the success of last year's tour, and our very real commitment to this music, it does not seem too far-fetched to hope that Ballet Inganzo will one day share the stages of WOMAD and Glastonbury with the massed ranks of their fellow drummers and dancers from Janja and elsewhere.

FOR MORE INFORMATION ABOUT BALLET INGANZO, INSHUTI-UK, OR CLAJERANG, PLEASE CALL CHRIS, BORIS, OR DORIAN ON 44-(0)20-8355-7671 OR 44-(0)7951-658987, OR EMAIL: DORIAN_HAZE@HOTMAIL.COM / B.HUNKA@SCFUK.ORG.UK / FREEFALLINDUSTRIES@HOTMAIL.COM















Contributed by: Dorian Hayes

First published: www.afropop.org