The making of a ‘superstar’: the politics of playback and live performance in post-genocide Rwanda

Abstract

This article considers the reconstruction of Rwanda's post-genocide music industry through the national music competition, Primus Guma Guma Super Star. It explores local ideas about ‘playback’ and ‘live’ music, and argues that these two performative categories can be understood as wider metaphors for the relationship between the Rwandan state and its citizens, particularly Rwandan youth. On the one hand, Guma Guma aims to create the ideal post-genocide celebrity subject who will ‘play back’ a unified, de-ethnicized Rwandan identity with body and words. On the other, during the first two seasons of the competition, audiences demanded ‘live’ performance and Guma Guma prompted heated debate about ‘taboo’ topics, revealing enduring differences along socio-economic, ethnic and regional lines. Rather than affirm an inclusive Rwandan identity, Guma Guma hinted at its fragility and underscored the multiple and conflicting ways in which young people identify themselves and evaluate ‘truth’ in the post-genocide era. The article contributes not only to literature on popular culture in Africa, but also to studies that focus on mediation and changes in recording technology. Although scholars have quite rightly attempted to dissolve the boundary between the live and the mediated, I suggest that the boundary continues to do cultural and political work, particularly in developmental states.

Post-genocide identity politics and colonial durabilities in Rwanda

“…Buckley-Zistel 2009; McLean Hilker 2009), ethnic markers remain part of everyday life. Moreover, de-ethnicisation does not prevent ethnicity and its racialization bursting into popular public discourse itself (Grant 2019(Grant , 2017. The latter is perhaps the most striking and is revealed through the heated debates around the Miss Rwanda 2019 pageant.…”

“…Its popularity as a social phenomenon closely compares to football, music and the tour du Rwanda competitions, important popular cultural events that attract thousands of Rwandans from within the country and the diaspora, as well as visitors. They are meant to symbolize the 'new Rwanda' and its rebirth in popular culture (Grant 2017). Yet none of these events bring such close scrutiny of body and demeanour as Miss Rwanda does.…”