Rwandan Records

walka­ble music thea­ter

Upon hea­ring the word Rwan­da, most peo­p­le pro­ba­b­ly think of the geno­ci­de that began 25 years ago in April. The­re has been mas­si­ve eco­no­mic deve­lo­p­ment sin­ce then and the coun­try now pres­ents its­elf as an “Afri­can Tiger”. But Rwanda’s youn­ger gene­ra­ti­on, like Germany’s, has to grapp­le with a dif­fi­cult lega­cy. Crossing magni­fi­cent visi­ons of the future with year­nings for disper­sed tra­di­ti­ons, Diet­rich and Kipf­mül­ler, the Rwandan spo­ken word artist Eric 1key and the Ber­lin-based com­po­ser Klaus Janek have deve­lo­ped “Rwandan Records” – a record label, sound stu­dio, bar and archi­ve of per­so­nal recoll­ec­tions. The pro­ject pres­ents a new and unu­su­al per­spec­ti­ve on iden­ti­ty in a glo­bal con­text. In Rwan­da and Ger­ma­ny, the­re is a simi­lar inte­rest in pop cul­tu­re and the key­words used in public deba­te – iden­ti­ty, migra­ti­on, com­mu­ni­ty, inte­gra­ti­on, home, tra­di­ti­on and pro­spe­ri­ty – are the same. But in Rwan­da, they are asso­cia­ted with com­ple­te­ly dif­fe­rent visi­ons and thus gain new, expan­ded mea­nings. After recor­ding many con­ver­sa­ti­ons with many peo­p­le in Rwan­da, Diet­rich and Kipf­mül­ler have crea­ted a hete­ro­ge­neous ensem­ble of voices. This work of walka­ble musi­cal theat­re is at once sound instal­la­ti­on and radio play, con­cert and staged space, who­se acou­stic archi­tec­tu­re is shaped by the audi­ence. The com­po­si­ti­on moves bet­ween dif­fe­rent times and worlds, bet­ween tra­di­tio­nal songs, pop music and elec­tro­nic sounds. The voices of the ensem­ble and its sto­ries beco­me a moving live sym­pho­ny. The audience’s move­ments are tra­cked so that at the end visi­tors can down­load and take home with them a per­so­nal album of the sto­ries that they heard. Only the files that are lis­ten­ed to will be saved. The others will vanish. Indi­vi­du­al decis­i­ons thus enable coll­ec­ti­ve know­ledge to be pre­ser­ved or actively for­got­ten. A nar­ra­ti­ve that tran­s­cends gen­re and cul­tu­re will emer­ge on the basis of a com­bi­na­ti­on of dif­fe­rent times, visi­ons of the past and the future, as well as breaks in people’s bio­gra­phies.