Music
Landmark
Simon Bikindi
1954 – 2018
The most popular Rwandan singer of his generation, convicted of incitement to genocide
Landmark is level 2 of 4 in the Rwanda Hall of Fame: a first that opened a door, or the pre-eminent figure of their generation in this country. See how the levels work.
Why they are here
Rwanda's best-known musician through the 1980s and early 1990s, whose songs were staples of national radio. In 2008 the international tribunal convicted him of incitement to commit genocide — not for the songs, for which he was acquitted, but for a speech he broadcast from his car.
Simon Bikindi was born in Rwerere in the north-west and trained at the national ballet before making his name as a singer, songwriter, dancer and choreographer. Through the 1980s and into the early 1990s he was the most popular musician in Rwanda by a wide margin.
His music was built out of Rwandan traditional forms — the drumming, the dance vocabulary of the intore, the call-and-response of rural song — arranged for a modern band and put on the radio. He led his own troupe, Irindiro, performed at national occasions, and worked in the ministry of youth and sport. Records like Twasezereye, written for the twenty-fifth anniversary of independence, were played constantly, and his songs were the common property of a generation of Rwandans in a way that no other musician's were.
He fled in 1994, was arrested in the Netherlands in 2001, and died in prison in Benin in 2018.
His music remains widely known in Rwanda and cannot be left out of any account of the country's popular culture in that period, which is why he is listed here. What the tribunal found is set out above, and readers should weigh the two together rather than either alone.
His music was built out of Rwandan traditional forms — the drumming, the dance vocabulary of the intore, the call-and-response of rural song — arranged for a modern band and put on the radio. He led his own troupe, Irindiro, performed at national occasions, and worked in the ministry of youth and sport. Records like Twasezereye, written for the twenty-fifth anniversary of independence, were played constantly, and his songs were the common property of a generation of Rwandans in a way that no other musician's were.
He fled in 1994, was arrested in the Netherlands in 2001, and died in prison in Benin in 2018.
His music remains widely known in Rwanda and cannot be left out of any account of the country's popular culture in that period, which is why he is listed here. What the tribunal found is set out above, and readers should weigh the two together rather than either alone.
- UN News — Rwandan singer sentenced to prison by UN tribunal for inciting genocide
- Wikipedia — Simon Bikindi
- JusticeInfo — ICTR appeals court reaffirms 15-year sentence on ex-Rwandan top musician
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