The Way of Hope is an aspiring Rwandan youth choir, whose live music performances have changed very many lives across the nation. With their angelic voices in their gospel songs, the choir started singing in 2012 when all of them were at a tender age but have already secured invitations to perform in countries across the region. In an interview with the Sunday magazine’s Edwin Ashimwe, Josue Ishimwe, the president of the choir shared their interesting journey of seven years and a call for the youth to use their different talents to work for God. First of all, who are The Way of Hope choir? The Way of Hope choir comprises of young people from the Seventh Day Adventist Church, Remera. We started singing together a very long time ago, although at first we were two different choirs, one being s for boys (Hope Singers), and the other (Way to Heaven) being for girls. The two choirs then officially merged and made one stronger choir back in 2012. How many members are in the choir? The choir is made up of very many members, currently we have 35 members who are in Rwanda and about 10 of our choir members have gone abroad to pursue further studies. How many songs do you have so far? We have approximately 100 songs although I cannot give a particular figure. On the other hand, we have three albums so far, our very first being in Kinyarwanda that we titled Ihumure, the other one is a Swahili album while the recent one is in Kinyarwanda. What message dominates your gospel songs? Advocating for the “three angels’ message” in particular, dominates most of the choir’s songs. As a young choir that is coming up in this generation, we think that there should be enough advocacy, on the second coming. We chose this theme because we believe that in the little resources we have, there is nothing else we can do apart from advocating for Christ’s second coming. Who composes all of your songs? We have a small choir administration which consists of a coaching committee that is in charge of voices and instruments. So basically, anyone could have an idea regardless of whether they are in the coaching team or not but it is developed in the coaching committee, meaning that everyone is a composer in the choir and the composed piece is fine-tuned by the coaching committee. Josue Ishimwe is the president of The Way of Hope choir. Courtesy photos. Besides singing together, are there other activities that you are currently involved in? Yes, as a choir, we have formed an initiative that we named “Youth for Christ”. Every year we make time with different junior choirs and visit different schools in Rwanda with a major objective of helping the young Rwandan students have a clear mindset about the decisions that they make. We perform live for them and give them personal testimonies so they can learn from us. We also visit the sick in different neighborhoods and use our talents to comfort and preach to them. How are you able to produce your songs at this young age both CDs and DVDs? Actually, we were fortunate enough as a choir because it is a group made of different talents, not just singing but we have our own producer, the videographer is also a choir member so you see that mostly God helped us to cover most of them, however getting a studio is the only obstacle that we still encounter, because most of the choir members are still students both high school and college so being able to raise a good amount of money is still a challenge and that is where our loving parents play their role, our parents have been so supportive and also our partners in fact our friends. Have you met some challenging tasks as a choir so far? Obviously these are issues you will never miss in every upcoming choir, as the Way of Hope, we started when close to everybody was in boarding school, then this means that we only operated during holidays. Many of us were left out in rehearsals, others perfomed without memorizing the song, our voices were not synchronised, all that attributes to the very small impact that we made as a choir. What are your aspirations as a choir? Well, our first priority is fostering the spread of the gospel in places where it has not been before, we cannot settle knowing that our priority is not achieved, which is why we have been translating some of our songs in regional and more commonly used languages so that the whole world can be able to listen to our message, and as a result we were invited to Tanzania and the people loved our music so much. This motivated us to prepare our grand concert which will take place on July 24, and we hope that the youth turn up in big numbers. editor@newtimesrwanda.com
