Linda Mbabazi
18 March 2009
Kigali — Two-time Kora Awards winner, Jean Paul Samputu, last Saturday performed to hundreds in London, at a concert to celebrate 15-years of peace in Rwanda.
The Canadian- based Rwandan star flew to London from Kigali last week, where he had just organised an international conference on peace and reconciliation.
Samputu said that he took the same message of peace, love and reconciliation to people living in the United Kingdom and Europe.
"We had enough time to prepare ourselves for the concert, in order to give the best to Rwandans and friends of Rwanda in London," said Samputu. So far, the concert has been billed as the biggest Rwandan ever held in the British capital.
After realising his dream of becoming an international music icon, Samputu treated his vocal cord smoothly, and establishment himself in the local music industry at an early age and in return, he has captured the international music scene.
Samputu's biggest break came in the wake of 2003when he was nominated for two Kora Awards for Best African Traditional Artist and Most Promising Male Artist. He also won a prestigious all-Africa award for the latter category.
He gained a strongly devoted fan base and challenged whatever his rivals attempted to cast in order to stop him from climbing to the heights of the music scene. His supernatural vocals and dominance in the music industry has greatly earned him fame in his native country, and beyond.
Samputu has collaborated with the hottest singers in the local industry, everyone from contemporaries like Rafiki, to Rwanda's Belgium-based great female star, Cecile Kayirebwa.
After his self-declared retirement from secular music to gospel in 2007, Samputu quickly became captivated with the popular Christian phrase: "Repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God."
And he has also embarked on another phase in his illustrious career by diverting to composing peace and reconciliation songs, which is an ideal to rebuild the country after the terrible 1994 Rwandan genocide against the Tutsi.
Born in 1962, and raised by both his parents in the small town of Ngoma in Butare in the current southern province, Samputu begun singing in 1977 in a Church choir and later became a professional singer.
As he vividly discusses in his lyrics, Samputu enjoys the variety of traditional and contemporary music, as well as the lyrics of the world's most celebrated singers: Stevie Wonder, Bob Marley, Lionel Ritchie and Jimmy Cliff.
He also participated in forming the legendary local music group, Nyampinga, which eventually went on to record three albums that contained early hit songs like, Crayon Na Shimboke (referring to the then style of dress in vogue in Rwanda) , and Ingendo Yabeza (Walk of Beauty).
Samputu subsequently decided to make an untraditional decision to quit Nyampinga and recorded his first solo album, 'Tegeka isi' (govern the world), that included his hit song 'Ni kuki?' (why?), in 1985.
The artistic star sings in six languages (Kinyarwanda, Swahili, Lingala, Luganda, French and English). And his style of singing ranges from soukous, rhumba, vodou and reggae, to traditional Rwandan, afrobeat, pygmy, and gospel.
Using traditional Rwandan instruments and singing in the styles unique to his native country, Samputu combines unique musical traditions from all regions of Rwanda, among them, intwatwa, umushayayo, imparamba, and ikinimba.
Today, the 'Disi Garuka' singer speaks of the forgiveness that is healing Rwanda, as the world discovers that Rwandans can again live together in peace.
He also founded Mizero Children to help heal orphans of the 1994 Rwanda genocide against the Tutsi. He believes these children's home will help in restoring the country from the previous bad regimes.
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