Date of Award

2013

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelors

Department

Humanities

First Advisor

Clark, Maribeth

Keywords

Rwanda, Genocide, Music, Simon Bikindi

Area of Concentration

Humanities

Abstract

In this thesis I explore how three songs by Simon Bikindi affected the decision to engage in genocide. After researching the role of the infamous radio station Radio Television Libre des Milles Colines (RTLM) in the 1994 genocide, and learning about Simon Bikindi from that research, I found that I was dissatisfied with the writings that were supposed to be explaining how the words sung by Bikindi and said by broadcasters of RTLM did little more than list what was said and state that it was inflammatory. This thesis aims to fill in the gaps, or at least try to. I began with the hypothesis (the fact) that all humans are biologically equal- there is no "race" that is better or worse than any other. With that in mind, I first delineate the basic history of Rwanda and the words "Hutu" and "Tutsi" to see how they became racialized. As expected, the words did not naturally carry any kind of racist meaning, but gained it overtime as history was misconstrued. How, then, did people come to believe that these titles were not only meaningful, but something worth killing over? As a musician, Simon Bikindi held a special position of cultural power and traditional clout that he tapped into with his three songs Twasezereye, Bene Sebahinzi, and Nanga Abahutu. The devices he employs in these songs set a false precedent of violence between the Hutu and Tutsi and build off a history invented by the Belgians who colonized Rwanda in 1916. With this in mind, I then take a wider look at how beliefs and myths come to shape society and our actions. The ultimate goal is to show a possible explanation for how Bikindi's inflammatory words manifested into real violent action.

Rights

This bibliographic record is available under the Creative Commons CC0 public domain dedication. The New College of Florida Libraries, as creator of this bibliographic record, has waived all rights to it worldwide under copyright law, including all related and neighboring rights, to the extent allowed by law.

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