Rwandan Records Album

What does tra­di­ti­on mean when the past is tain­ted by cri­mes? Who deci­des what is car­ri­ed on a coll­ec­ti­ve know­ledge and moo­red in the cul­tu­re? RWANDAN RECORDS is a sound instal­la­ti­on, radio play and live con­cert by Sound­ing Situa­tions fea­turing artists from Rwan­da and Ger­ma­ny and com­bi­nes pre-colo­ni­al accounts with sto­ries from the pre­sent. It invi­tes audi­ence mem­bers to immer­se them­sel­ves in the sto­ries shared by Rwan­da and Ger­ma­ny.

What you expe­ri­ence in the pie­ce on a musi­cal level is a sound­scape for­med out of field recor­dings of nowa­days done by Klaus Janek, musi­cal field recor­dings and music experts coll­ec­ted in the 20th cen­tu­ry start­ing from 1907 to the 80ies – the noti­on of a Rwandan audi­tive cul­tu­re scape. The voices of the recor­dings which are acti­va­ted by the audi­ence mix an own lan­guage sound­scape to the space. The pri­va­te encoun­ters with tho­se voices are now and then spo­ra­di­cal­ly inter­rupt­ed by a coll­ec­tively shared con­cert event: the music of the­se events you are hol­ding in your hand now.

“Isn’t that what poli­ti­cal­ly moti­va­ted art is sup­po­sed to do—open up per­spec­ti­ves? And isn’t that what art in gene­ral should do […]?”

field notes maga­zi­ne on the music of Rwandan Records published at the label Syr­phe