BUDDING LOCAL DISK JOCKEY Diallon Mutabazi, known by his stage name as DJ Diallo, is on an African tour in a fresh push to promote his deejaying activities across the continent. The DJ started his tour in August beginning with East African countries and is now ready to take his decks to other countries across Africa. Diallo has made a name for himself as an online club DJ during the pandemic and a TV DJ at local entertainment TV station, ISIBO. He is now looking to expand his name as a DJ through performances in concerts happening out of the country. “I am doing this tour because I want to expand my name to the international scene,” he told The New Times in an interview. Had it not been for the coronavirus pandemic, Diallo said that he would have started the tour earlier but the pandemic halted his plans and he was forced to hold on until it relaxes. “The concerts that I was supposed to attend, including Fally Ipupa’s concerts in Goma and Kinshasa, were postponed due to the pandemic. Everything was obviously stuck and my tour was delayed as a result,” he said. After waiting for a year and a half for the concerts to resume, he continued his tour, starting with a performance in Goma on August 21, at a club that hosted over 3, 000 revelers. On September 2, he did another performance in Nairobi at a curtain-raising concert and is now in preparations to perform in Mombasa, in December. After touring East Africa, DJ Diallo will then extend his tour to the West African region where he targets to entertain music lovers at four big concerts scheduled to be held in Burkina Faso, Mali, Senegal, Ivory Coast. “These concerts are big but I won’t say much about them because organisers are yet to communicate the details. But one sure thing is that they will attract so many people and I am looking forward to making sure that thousands of people from West Africa say that there is a Rwandan DJ who got them entertained,” he said. Expanding DJ Academy beyond borders In December last year, DJ Diallo in collaboration with his compatriot Kelvin Arinaitwe, a.k.a DJ Kelvin, opened a professional DJ Academy in Kigali following many requests from several youngsters aspiring to become professional DJs. Dubbed ‘Innovation DJ Academy’, the school opened at a time when young people have been in need of professional deejaying skills from a recognized academy other than the existing Scratch Music Academy whose capacity was too little to equip a bigger number of aspiring DJs. The academy began its operations with 10 students which has increased to more than 50. But DJ Diallo wants to take advantage of the tour to identify places in which he will open new branches to expand the academy beyond borders not only contribute in preparing the new generation of African DJs but also as an opportunity to promote the school across the continent. “Yes I want my name to be recognised internationally but I also want to see our DJ Academy be known across the continent. Through the tour, I want to promote it and look at how branches can open in different countries,” he explained. Burundi and Kenya are the latest countries that DJ Diallo plans to open branches for Innovation DJ Academy.
