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Dancing along the path to joy
by Cassie M. Chew
Photos by Julie Wiatt |
Jean Paul Samputu said that he would make them happy. And he did.
At the end of the 90-minute performance when Samputu asked, “Are you ready to dance?” the audience could hardly wait to get out of their seats and in the aisles to move to the exuberant music of Ingeli of Rwanda.
Through a series of traditional Rwandan dances, songs and drum beats, the three-member ensemble lifted the spirits and warmed the hearts of about 200 adults and children one chilly Saturday afternoon at the NOAA auditorium in Silver Spring last month.
“He has a real flair for the choreography and the production of the performance and I think that the showmanship is remarkable,” said Busy Graham, founder of Silver Spring-based Class Acts Arts, which brought the group to the D.C. area.
In 12 days, Ingeli gave 23 performances, reaching more than 7,000 at 16 different sites in the greater Washington, D.C. area. Graham began coordinating the tour with Samputu more than a year ago after the wife of her husband’s childhood friend invited Samputu and Ingeli to perform for a dance class in Vermont.
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Ingeli of Rwanda began touring the United States in 2004 to mark the ten-year period since the Rwandan Genocide. In 1994, during a period of 100 days, more than 900,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were slaughtered in Rwanda.
Samputu lost his mother, father, three brothers and a sister to the genocide. He creates music that speaks to his mission of peace, hope and reconciliation.
“I am going to start with a song about blessing,” Samputu began at the NOAA performance as he steadied his guitar against his body. “I am going to ask God to bless everybody here.” |
On a bare stage Samputu strummed his guitar and began his song. Two lean male dancers, wearing hot orange and fuchsia wraps around their toned waists and bells strapped to their ankles, powerfully pounded out tightly choreographed and highly athletic footwork that punctuated the melody of Samputu’s voice.
In another song Samputu simply sang “No more genocide! no more genocide! no more genocide.” The lyrics of another melody celebrate the young. “All the children are the children of all,” he sings. “Hold them so tight, don’t let them fall.”
Throughout the performance the three performers filled the stage, commanding the attention of the audience as they changed roles from singer to drummer to dancer and as they introduced an assortment of Rwandan musical instruments to the audience.
The inanga is shaped like a miniature canoe with flat ends and twelve strings pulled across from end to end and played with the fingers. It is made of a special wood, Samputu says, “The wood represents peace, love, reconciliation and we use it to praise God.”
Later during the performance Samputu introduces the audience to the umuduri, an instrument made with a curved stick of wood with a string pulled, like a bow, between its tip and about two-thirds of the way down. A hollowed-out gourd is attached to the opposite side of the stick near where the end of the string is tied. The performers play the instrument with two chopstick-like pieces of wood.
“We come here to promote our culture,” performer Jacques Nyungura says, surrounded by children and adults who come to greet the artists and touch the instruments after the performance. “We have to teach our culture.”
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Although they plan to tour the United States through 2008, Ingeli of Rwanda still has not found a place here to call home. “Everywhere we go people are telling us ‘You have to stay here,’” Vincent Nsemgiyukva says. |
“We are praying to God to tell us where to live,” Nyungura says.
But the D.C. area will get another chance to experience Ingeli again.
“We are in the process of finalizing contracts for performances in the D.C. and Maryland area during the first week in May,” said Margie T. Farmer, director of Hampstead, Maryland-based Class Acts on Tour, which is representing the group nationally and internationally.
“His performances and his story are very moving,” Farmer said describing Samputu. “He just brings a path of joy everywhere he goes.”
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