Cécile Kayirebwa (born 22 October 1946) is a Rwandan singer. She brought her family up in

Belgium Belgium, officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a country in Northwestern Europe. Situated in a coastal lowland region known as the Low Countries, it is bordered by the Netherlands to the north, Germany to the east, Luxembourg to the southeas ...

, but she has toured and published albums. She is known for singing about Rwanda. She sued Rwandan radio stations in 2013 for failing to pay her royalties.

Life

Kayirebwa was born in

Kigali Kigali () is the Capital (political), capital and largest city of Rwanda. It is near the nation's geographic centre in a region of rolling hills, with a series of valleys and ridges joined by steep slopes. As a primate city, Kigali is a relativ ...

in 1946. Both of her parents were enthusiastic singers and she would sing pop songs that she had heard sung by Johnny Hallyday,

Stevie Wonder Stevland Hardaway Morris (; Judkins; born May 13, 1950), known professionally as Stevie Wonder, is an American and Ghanaian singer-songwriter, musician, and record producer. He is regarded as one of the most influential musicians of the 20th c ...

and France Gall. She joined a group who were broadcast by Radio Rwanda whilst she was still a child. She had a happy childhood and she trained to become a welfare officer. Meanwhile her singing developed into composing where she built on her study of traditional Rwandan music. She notably wrote songs in praise of the Rwandan Queen Rosalie who was a benign ruler.Cecile Kayirebwa Biography
Colin Larkin, The Encyclopedia of Popular Music Kayirebwa was invited to sing for her Queen, but in 1973 war broke out in her country and she left with her mother to live in Belgium. They also lived in

Lozère Lozère (; ) is a landlocked Departments of France, department in the Regions of France, region of Occitania (administrative region), Occitanie in Southern France, located near the Massif Central, bounded to the northeast by Haute-Loire, to the ...

, where her mother lived with a French soldier and she became fluent speaking and singing in French.Biography
Craig Harris, AllMusic.com, Retrieved 4 March 2016 She was a member of a group called ''Iyange'' for five years.
, africanmusiciansprofiles.com, Retrieved 4 March 2016 In Europe she continued to work as a singer to her fellow members of the Rwandan diaspora. She and her husband had four children and she studied her cultural heritage at the

Royal Museum for Central Africa The Royal Museum for Central Africa (RMCA) (; ; ), communicating under the name AfricaMuseum since 2018, is an ethnography and natural history museum situated in Tervuren in Flemish Brabant, Belgium, just outside Brussels. It was originally b ...

in Tervuren. She appeared around Europe and America in the group ''Bula Sangoma'' in the mid 1980s and they created an album in 1985. In 1988 she returned home too late to be reunited with her mother, who died in Rwanda just before she arrived. She sang her song about happiness which was titled "Umunezero" and the song was said to be popular with the Rwandan Patriotic Front. Kayirebwa sang in groups and alone. Her first solo album was titled "Music from Rwanda" and it included songs by . She released albums in 2002 and 2005 and she participates in festivals including the Holocaust Memorial Event in London in 2001. She and Christine Coppel formed a charity called "Hope, the Children of a Thousand Hills" which is concerned with her homeland. In 2013 Kayirebwa sued Rwandan radio stations including the state broadcaster, Radio Rwanda, as she was frequently heard but she had received no royalties.Court orders Orinfor, Isango star pay Rwf 8.6M to Kayirebwa
, February 2013, GretLakesVoice, Retrieved 4 March 2016

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kayirebwa, Cecile 1946 births Living people People from Kigali Rwandan women singers