A ‘born-in-Hollywood’ music artist with a ‘born-in-log-cabin’ soul, Ken Stringfellow, a singer, songwriter, producer and founding member of the acclaimed power pop band “The Posies” held his last concert of 2020 in Kigali, Rwanda. Every year Ken plays shows abroad and in the new countries just to meet new people, learn about the world. He and two musicians from Kigali, Espoir and Alexis from music school formed a band just for his concert streamed from Kigali House of Stories. They played his normal repertoire and fused in a cover of “Ihorere mwiza wanjye by Inono Star” and a song from Trezor, Espoir’s formal band. Ken mentioned that when he was planning this concert, he thought that being a good guest would be making money and sharing it with the community, not just taking everything back home. The show therefore, benefited Musicians without Borders and Solar Sister, two organisations bringing musical education in the communities of Africa (including Rwanda). The singer personally believes it is a great way to use music as a legitimate tool of helping people in healing. During his stay in Rwanda, all the way from France where he currently lives, Ken spent some days visiting Akagera National Park, music schools and ‘hanging around’ to have a glimpse of Christmas in Kigali. When asked “Why Rwanda this year” He said: “Well, every year I go somewhere new! Although traveling was difficult in 2020 Americans were privileged to travel to some few places and Rwanda was among them. To me Rwanda sounded intriguing and also as soon as I mentioned it to a couple of friends who happened to have done some work here they said that it’s a magical place and had more nice things to say about it, plus it’s reputation about safety and the way it quickly took Covid-19 bold measures and raised its awareness to the citizens. “Also, a lot changed within the week I arrived, like curfew was put two hours earlier which affected my concert to being a no audience event and that showed me how seriously the government is taking this pandemic,” he added. The 52-year-old is spinning around the sun. He moved to France in 2003 for his marriage but still has strong ties with Seattle where his history and content starts with The Posies then R.EM, Big Star, The Disciplines and Lagwagon. For a stretch of four decades, his band The Posies sold over 500,000 records and have been cited as a major influence on such diverse artists as Radiohead, Snow Patrol, Queen Latifah and many more. They have shared stage with some other big names like The Beatles, Red Zeppelin, among many. After almost a decade of doing solo shows since the 90s, he realised it could be something special, unique and worth doing as its own presentation. He then started to develop that special atmosphere that’s only possible in his solo shows though it seemed like a lesser substitute for the band until it went on hiatus 1998-2000, which gave him time and choice, to make it an artistic voice all its own. His solo career currently has a much higher profile than his band in places like — Germany, Austria and others.
