Caribbea’s most legendary Zouk group, Kassav’, will next month conduct their 40th anniversary tour. They will perform in Kigali as part of the tour. Coincidently, Rwandan R&B singer, Christopher Muneza will be celebrating a decade in music and for this reason, the two will share a stage on Valentine’s Day, in a show called, "Kassav’ Live Kigali feature Christopher.”
The performance by Guadeloupe-based group on February 14, will be their first gig in Rwanda and is expected to include a wide array of the group’s biggest hits, including "Zouk la se sel medikaman nou ni”, "Mwen di ou awa”, "Oh Madiana”, "Doméyis”, "Siwo” and "Pa bizwen pale” among others.
After Kigali, the band will be heading to Berlin and New York, where they will be performing.
L-R: Radisson Blu’s Hanna Moges, Arthur Nation’s Nice Budandi, RG Consult’s Remmy Lubega and singer Christopher Muneza at the news conference on Thursday. /Courtesy.
To ensure that the show is a success, RG Consult and Arthur Nation, both creative and events management companies have partnered their expertise to organise the legendary show that will be held at Kigali Convention Centre.
RG Consult is known for organising their monthly jazz event, Kigali Jazz Junction as well as Legends Alive, while Arthur Nation is known for their monthly comedy shows ‘Seka Live’.
At a press conference held on Thursday, Nice Budandi, the director and co-founder at Arthur Nation said they have been preparing for the show a long time, since last year and ready to pull off memorable one.
We started preparations for the concert for a long time and approached the band’s management. Our aim has been to bring international legends and RG Consult has been organising Legends Alive so we thought of how we could combine efforts and bring this band on the same stage with a Rwandan artiste. Thinking of which Rwandan artiste we could bring on board, Christopher was best fit as he will be celebrating 10 years in the music industry,” he said.
Known for love ballads like Ijuru Rito, Ndabyemeye, Like a Queen, and Your Body, Christopher has for the past four years been hosting and performing at his Valentine’s day show, and for him but will be performing alongside Kassav’ this year.
"Instead of staging different concerts on the same day, it was only wise that we combine effort and so this time round, my only job will be to rehearse for my performance on Valentine’s Day. I will perform to the best of my capabilities because I do not take for granted, sharing a stage with the legendary band, Kassav’ that I grew up listening to,” he said.
On his part, Remmy Lubega, the RG Consult chief executive, said that while they have engaged on several events over the years bringing international legendary artistes and engaged quality local artistes such that they can get a platform, this time round they are partnering with Arthur nation to ensure that the show is a memorable one.
"Being players in the same industry we need to collaborate and the experience that you will see in Kigali will prove why our partnership was worth it. This should be a lesson to other event organisers that instead of pulling each other, work together to build each other,” he said
Besides the show, the concert will feauture a dinner at Raddison Blu Hotel and organisers are partnering with Gameville Entertainment, a reservation based company that offers leisure, recreation, team building activities, which will host a full valentine’s promotion like a city tour, games, movie night and masquerade salsa party all the following day, February 15, for people who registered.
About Kassav’
Kassav’ was formed in 1979 by Pierre-Edouard Décimus and Paris studio musician Jacob F. Desvarieux. Together, the duo decided to make Guadeloupian carnival music and record it in a more fully-orchestrated yet modern and polished style (as electronics had begun to infiltrate recorded popular music in that decade).
In the 1980s they would take Caribbean music to another level by recording in the newly-developed purely digital format available in Paris at the time and hence became the leading band to emerge from the formative years of Zouk.
The band gave the genre a pan-Caribbean touch by taking elements from Haitian kompa, Dominica Cadence-lypso, Dominican merengue, Nuevo Rican salsa, Trinidadian calypso, Republic of Cameroon’s music Makossa and the result became world-famous. The band gained great popularity by performing in different countries in the world.
Tickets are already on sale via www.rgtickets.com. Early birds tickets go for Rwf10, 000 in regular seats, while VIP and VVIP tickets are at Rwf20, 000 and Rwf30, 000 respectively. Tickets will also be sold at the Seka Live tomorrow, January 26.