The passing of Suzanne Nyiranyamibwa brings sorrow to all who found, in her songs, something of their own lives: the pain of separation, the longing for home, the grief of losing loved ones and the determination to keep hope alive.
From our liberation story recollections in Europe to today’s Rwanda, her voice belongs to Rwanda’s memory. It accompanied a generation through exile, supported the aspiration to return home and helped give expression to losses that ordinary speech could scarcely contain. Today, as we mourn her, we honour an artist whose contribution forms part of our country’s history.
For many Rwandans who lived outside their homeland like myself, music helped sustain a connection that distance and persecution threatened to weaken. Songs carried our language into our children’s lives. They preserved expressions, memories and ways of feeling that could otherwise have faded far from home. They allowed people scattered across countries and continents to recognise one another as members of a community with a history and a future. I keep fond memories of our fundraising performances with Cecile Kayirebwa and Valens Kajeguhakwa in my London family flat in 1992.
Suzanne Nyiranyamibwa contributed generously to that work of cultural preservation. Through her voice, Rwanda remained close from far.
Her own life bore the wounds of the history about which she sang. Her father was killed in 1963. She fled Rwanda in 1973, living first in what was then Zaire and later in Belgium. Her mother was killed during the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi. Behind the songs stood a woman who understood loss, displacement and the enduring pull of her country.
We should remember this when listening to her music. The emotion in her voice came from a life lived through painful circumstances, and from the effort to find words and melodies that others could share. Many listeners recognised their own sorrow in her songs. In that recognition, they could also find companionship.
As one of the founding members of Itorero Isamaza in Belgium, she helped mobilise support for Rwanda’s liberation struggle. Those who remember that period understand the significance of such contributions. The struggle drew strength from people who gave what they could, wherever they lived. Artists helped bring communities together, sustained morale and expressed the conviction that Rwandans driven from their country had a right to return and belong.
Suzanne offered her talent to that collective endeavour. She understood that a voice could serve a people.
After the genocide, remembrance placed further demands upon Rwanda’s artists. How could one sing of those who had been murdered without diminishing the enormity of their loss? How could one comfort survivors while respecting grief that would endure throughout their lives? How could the young be helped to understand what had happened? Nyiranyamibwa was one of my best, I will certainly miss her and her songs.
Her songs became part of Rwanda’s response to those difficult questions. Ese mbaze nde? carries the anguish of searching for answers in the aftermath of devastating loss. Across her repertoire, she gave expression to mourning, longing, dignity and the desire to continue living.
Such music has a lasting place in our national life. During commemoration, a familiar voice can bring back the memory of a person, a household or a place with extraordinary force. For elders, it can allow tears that have long been held back. It can help a younger listener approach a history experienced by parents and grandparents. Suzanne’s voice carried that responsibility with feeling and gravity. My wife and I loved her and keep fond memories of hers particularly in 1992 when she visited us in London.
Her return to settle in Rwanda in 2016, after more than four decades abroad, also deserves remembrance. For a woman whose music expressed attachment to home, returning held profound meaning. It brought her into the daily life of the country she had carried through years of displacement.
There is something deeply moving in that journey: to have been forced away, to have sustained the hope of belonging, and eventually to come home.
As we honour her, we should also consider our responsibility towards the generation of artists to which she belonged. Their recordings, testimonies and accounts of how their songs came into being deserve careful preservation. So do the contributions of composers, performers and cultural troupes whose work helped sustain Rwanda through exile, liberation and reconstruction.
Young Rwandans should have the opportunity to know these artists beyond a familiar refrain. They should know the circumstances in which the music was created, the people it reached and the hopes it sustained. Preserving that history is a duty we owe both to those who created it and to those who will inherit it.
To Suzanne Nyiranyamibwa’s family, my family and I extend our heartfelt condolences. Rwanda shares your sorrow while recognising that the loss of a mother, grandmother, relative or friend is deeply personal. Behind the voice loved by the public was someone whose presence filled your daily lives.
We thank you dear family for sharing her with the nation.
Suzanne leaves us songs through which future generations will encounter something of Rwanda’s suffering, courage and love of home. We will hear her voice again in moments of remembrance and reflection. We will recognise the feeling she entrusted to it.
May she rest in eternal peace, and may her family and friends find comfort in the affection and gratitude of the many people her music touched.