Shaggy, Coca Cola and that Thong Song . . .
_ Deborah Anderson

“Reviewing the popular music of the twentieth century as a whole, most people
would probably agree that some of it is excellent, some unbearable and most
of it very indifferent. What the good, bad and indifferent share is a
musical language," Peter Van Der Merwe, Origins of Popular Style . 3

For most of 2001, I lived in Kigali, the capital city of Rwanda, where I expected to see very little of American pop culture since most of the national media at that time was government-controlled and the average wage is less than $1 US per day. I had always believed that the popularity of pop music was due to excessive radio play and the presence of a large consumer audience, both of which appeared to be lacking in Rwanda. Yet, Shaggy, the Gulf War veteran-turned singer, was as ubiquitous as Coca Cola. On the outskirts of Kigali, on a rough, unpaved red earthen road lined with goats, banana trees and mud houses, I spotted a white mini-van bus emblazoned with an Andy Warhol-styled image of Shaggy. A young Rwandan friend even asked me to explain the lyrics of Shaggy's hit "It wasn't me" which she had heard in a bar in Kibuye, a small resort town along Lake Kivu. She laughed uproariously at the story, which was good to hear, since in Rwanda there hasn't been a lot of comedy in the past decade.

But, Shaggy wasn't alone. Lil' Bow Wow also seemed to enjoy some cult status in Rwanda as well. I was sitting in a parking lot at the Immigration office and in the car next to me a young man was playing a cassette tape, stopping and repeating it so he could write down the lyrics to Lil' Bow Wow's song about his "dogs." Surprisingly, Top 40 tapes are not hard to get in Rwanda. Pirated copies of tapes are sold by young boys who wander the streets of Kigali toting cardboard box tops filled with tapes of all kinds.

One Saturday, I went shopping with some friends in town. We had bought a bit of stuff, so at one point we took turns watching the truck with all of our groceries in it. Unfortunately, thieving from locked cars on crowded streets by young boys is a common occurrence in Kigali. When it was our friend's turn to watch the truck, a bunch of kids were hanging in the truck showing him their wares by the time we came back. We asked him, "So did you buy anything?" He said, " Well, I tried not to, but my plan backfired. This kid was waving some tapes at me and tried to sell them to me for 1000 francs ($2.50) each, so I said that I didn't have that much money. The kid then asked me what I had. I told him 100 francs (25 cents) hoping he would balk at that amount. To my surprise he said ok! I said you can't sell me a tape for that amount! He kept insisting, so I am now the owner of a Sisqo tape." I couldn't help thinking that finally, the real worth of a product is reflected in its price!

What I also discovered was that the cost of pirated tapes was not as prohibitive as I had once thought. Markets charge what the traffic will bear and, in the case of Rwanda, the cost of popular music is an affordable indulgence, just as it is in North America. At 100 francs for that thong song, Sisquo's tape is even cheaper than a Coca Cola. Bars, word of mouth, and pirated tapes also ensure that American pop stars get played excessively and, consequently, Rwandans, like North Americans, are inundated with pop songs that have catchy tunes they just can't get out of their heads.