Rwandan artistes have for the last few days been accusing DJs for not playing Rwandan music during their sessions, a move that did not sit well with disc jockeys.
The tension came after renowned Rwandan artiste and radio host, Uncle Austin, raised concerns on Twitter that Rwandan DJs don’t promote his music, as well as that of other local artistes.
This comes at a time when local DJs including Toxxyk, Marnaud, Pyfo have been releasing songs and collaborating with different Rwandan artistes.
One of the questions that has lingered is if most home grown DJs are artistes, are they also not playing their own music or Uncle Austin is focusing on the wrong issue and keeping a closed eye on serious problems that are in the industry?
We play local songs
Reacting to Austin’s tweet, different local DJs raised concerns saying that the accusations from artistes are biased and lack facts while others said that artistes should stop the blame-game and focus on making quality music.
"Who wouldn’t play a nice song?” Most Rwandan DJs claimed on social media.
Speaking to The New Times, DJ Pyfo who is on tour in Europe said that there is nothing like ignoring Rwandan music among local DJs.
He said, "Personally, I play Rwandan music everywhere I go and that’s what I am doing mostly on my tour. I try to push Rwandan music as far as I can.”
The ‘Kantona’ hit maker also said that most top DJs have collaborated with local artistes because they believe in them, which also indicates how the accusations from some artistes are based on bias.
"They say that we don’t play their music yet others are also blaming them for not playing local music on radios. This is just a blame-game and it’s not something we need now in the music industry, we have serious issues to deal with,” said DJ Pyfo who is among DJs who have collaborated with Rwandan artistes such as Kenny Kshot, E.T, Confy among others.
According to DJ Sonia, one of a few female deejays in Rwanda, artistes and DJs lack enough collaboration that can help both parties lead the music industry into the right direction.
"We shouldn’t blame the DJs, producers or artiste managers. We should just understand, from all the stakeholders, how are we going to get there? If you want to get your song across internationally, produce a song that has international appeal. It’s as simple as that,” DJ Sonia said.
The Magic FM in house disc jockey further noted that the best way for Rwanda’s music industry to grow is to collaborate and stop pointing fingers at each other, "we do play Rwandan songs but the main issue is not who or who doesn’t play Rwandan music. We should be teaming to take our music on another level,” she added.
Is our quality of music also a problem?
For DJ RY, every DJ has a target for his set, and these targets are set by the audience or the main goal of the event.
On the issue of not playing Rwandan music as much as Afrobeat, Amapiano or other western genres, RY said that the problem is still in the quality of music produced by local artistes.
This, he said, can only be heard through big speakers and good sound systems that are seen in few places like pubs, clubs or during big shows and festivals.
"Our audiences flow with trends and good music which is something that many Rwandan artistes don’t understand. Some of these songs have poor quality that when played on big speakers, one can’t listen to the lyrics or the melody. I am very sure that when a song is good, DJs play it,” Ry told The New Times adding that most of his mixtapes are made of only Rwandan songs.
"We should stop the blame-game and focus on making our music better. We should start looking at ways to plug our music to international platforms,” Ry added.