When we talk about how bad songs can be, it’s often amusing to go extremely hyperbolic. Let’s use last week’s Worst Song as an example. When I was describing what David Bowie and Mick Jagger did to “Dancing in the Street,” I was tempted to joke that it was like they committed a war crime against Motown. The problem was that I already had “Nanga Abahutu” in the pipeline and this song actually might qualify as a literal war crime.
Seriously.
This one requires a lot of historical context. In fact this entry will be all historical context. Simon Bikinidi was a popular singer-songwriter in Rwanda during the 1990s, his music combined traditional folk melodies with elements that approximated rap. After the assassination of President Juvenal Habyarimana, Rwanda’s hardline Hutu-led government implemented a massive campaign of genocide against the Tutsi. Between 500,000 to 1.075 million people were slaughtered over the period of several months, it was one of the most horrifying events of the 20th century.
Okay, I understand that this is a lot to take in, but for the purposes of this blog post, what’s important is how the government coordinated the country-wide massacre. One of their key weapons—and it very much was a weapon—was Radio Television Libre des Milles, the radio station that constantly promoted anti-Tutsi propaganda. It also, as it happens, would air music that drew in young listeners. Along with monologues that compared Tutsis to “cockroaches,” this station would play Bikindi’s songs. They, essentially acted as the soundtrack of the Rwandan genocide, with the song “Nanga Abahutu” being a particular favorite.
“Nanga Abahutu” translates to “I Hate Hutus.” It was a diatribe against Hutus who were sympathetic to the Tutsi population. One part of the song has been translated as follows:
“I hate these Hutus, who can be led to kill and who, I swear to you, kill Hutus. Dear comrades, if I hate them it is for the better.”
After the Rwandan genocide, Bikindi was put on trial for war crimes. Ultimately, the judges didn’t really want to go down the whole rabbit hole of deciding whether or not his songs encouraged mass murder. Instead, they sidestepped the whole argument by choosing to prosecute Bikindi on more straightforward hate speech charges:
“Simon Bikindi used a public address system to state that the majority population, the Hutu, should rise up to exterminate the minority, the Tutsi,” the judgment read. “On his way back, Bikindi used the same system to ask if people had been killing Tutsi, who he referred to as snakes.”
For this, and not technically his music, Bikindi was sentenced to 15 years in prison. From what I can gather, he was released in 2016 and then died of complications of diabetes in 2018. Those of us who love music will often talk about the power of music, the almost mystical hold it has on us, and its potential to change the world. What we don’t often acknowledge is the possibility that these qualities, in the wrong hands and in the wrong situation, could potentially make music extremely dangerous.
World's Worst Songs 