Mbwirabumva ("I Speak to Those Who Understand"): Three Songs By Simon Bikindi and the War and Genocide in Rwanda

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2013

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thesis

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Simon Bikindi was once the most famous and popular musician in Rwanda. In 1993 and 1994, the pro-genocide radio station, RTLM (Radio-Télévision Libre des Mille Collines), incorporated his songs into a propaganda campaign used to incite the genocide of the Tutsi minority. It is unclear, though, that this was the composer's intent as his songs easily lend themselves to more benign interpretations. Bikindi claims that his songs were intended as a call for peace, ethnic equality, fair elections, and good governance. Nevertheless, on December 2, 2008, he was convicted of incitement and sentenced to fifteen years imprisonment by the ICTR (International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda), making him the first professional musician in history to be successfully prosecuted under the Articles of the 1948 Geneva Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. His songs are now de facto censored in Rwanda. This dissertation presents an inquiry into the composer's intentions, his trial, the effects of his music on Rwandan audiences both in the early 1990s and today, and the ethical conundrums involved in the censorship of his music. I employ a polyvocal analysis of these issues that weaves together the reactions, reflections, and opinions of around fifty Rwandan research participants, including Bikindi, with whom I conversed and shared the songs. This analysis also incorporates the testimonies of fifty-eight witnesses who testified at Bikindi's trial. This approach shows that a singular, correct interpretation of Bikindi's songs is hardly a settled matter among Rwandans. Instead, views of Bikindi and interpretations of his music tend to correlate with ethnic identity, political allegiances, and perceptions and experiences of the genocide and its aftermath. These findings undermine assumptions of malicious intent on Bikindi's part even while they evince that the songs played a critical role in inciting genocide. Beyond considering issues of Bikindi's intentions and the effects of his songs as genocide propaganda, this dissertation also explores how engagement with his songs may facilitate healing processes among survivors. The songs serve as a catalyst to remembrance and self-narrativity of survivors' experiences of the genocide in a way that suggests potential therapeutic efficacy.

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