Bizimungu Dieudonne – Inzovu Y’imirindi

Forgotten and supposedly »lost« albums rarely remain forgotten for long in the digital age, as they eventually find their way back into the present through some wormhole in the World Wide Web. Inzovu Y’imirindi by Bizimungu Dieudonne, a Rwandan civil servant with a passion for music, was discovered by musicologist Matthew Lavoie almost by chance during research. In the late 1980s, Dieudonne self-released the tape, achieving a degree of local popularity. He plays guitar and sings together with his wife Agnes Umbibizi, while friends and family members provide the accompanying instrumentation.

The songs are deeply shaped by traditional African rhythms and melodies, even though the musicians make use of Western instruments. The arrangements are highly minimalist; tension arises from the length of the pieces, which comfortably exceed the six-minute mark, and from their repetitive character, which creates a distinctive pull of its own. Anyone who hears Western or even Asian influences in these songs might pause to ask who was actually inspiring whom. The lyrics describe the beauty of Rwanda and invoke the unity of the country, which was shaken only a few years later by the genocide of the Hutu – during which Bizimungu Dieudonne, his wife and their fellow musicians were murdered by militias.