The Good Ones - Rwanda Sings with Strings
“As welcoming as any porch-recorded music you’ve heard.” -- FADER
“How can songs be so mournful and so uplifting at once?” -- THE INDEPENDENT (UK)
“Agnes Dreams of Being an Artist” is the lead-off track for The Good Ones’ fifth album, Rwanda Sings With Strings. It was also the first song recorded during the album’s lone recording session — an epic twenty-three song affair. The Good Ones’ duo had just met the cellist and violin player moments before (and the two string players had also just met). There were no rehearsals, no demos, and no sheet music.
“It was all an experiment,” reports producer Ian Brennan [Tinariwen, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, Parchman Prison Prayer], “But the second the strings entered during the intro, it felt like the room began levitating and there was no doubt that something magical and profoundly beautiful was occurring. The album is extraordinarily ethereal — even by their high standards.”
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The celebrated Rwandan folk duo returns with a resonant fifth album, Rwanda Sings with Strings. The record combines their signature earthy vocals and acoustic instrumentation (guitar and hand percussion) with atmospheric cello and violin arrangements, creating a soundscape that vividly brings to life their powerful stories of resilience, memory, and longing.
Recorded 100% live without overdubs in a hotel room by Grammy-winning producer Ian Brennan (Tinariwen, Ramblin' Jack Elliott, Parchman Prison Project), the album delivers an unusually intimate listening experience. Reflective, unfiltered and deeply human.
For The Good Ones’ fifth album, the band’s producer, Ian Brennan scheduled a cellist and violinist to accompany the duo. The entire album was recorded in single takes without written scores or demos. The arrangements were improvised on the fly by the two string players who also didn’t know each other. Within minutes of meeting all four musicians were recording— their only communication, musical.
“It was all an experiment,” reports producer Ian Brennan, “but the second the strings entered during the intro of ‘Agnes Dreams of Being an Artist,’ it felt like the room began levitating and there was no doubt that something magical and profoundly beautiful was occurring. The album is extraordinarily ethereal— even by their high standards.”
The session fulfilled the group’s long-held dream to have main writer, guitarist, and lead vocalist, Adrien Kazigira’s songs performed with strings. Sequestered in a Washington, DC hotel room the day prior to The Good Ones NPR “Tiny Desk” session, the musicians recorded nineteen songs in just three hours. Kazigira was so happy with the experience, afterwards, he wrapped his arms around the cello, as he lay chuckling and exhausted on the couch.
The album’s sound is steeped in a romanticism, longing, and a sense of resigned grandeur that echoes Malian balladeers like Boubacar Traoré or even Nick Drake and Astral Weeks. Perfect Sunday morning listening.
“We’ve learned to over-write for every record. For each album released, there is an album worth of songs that are left off. In this case, I wrote over twenty-three new songs,” states Kazigira.
The songs (all sung in Kinyarwanda, the national language of Rwanda) deal with a variety of themes, but as always throughout The Good Ones’ decades long oeuvre, the primary topic is love. True to all of their past four albums, four songs here bear a woman’s name for their title.
Other tunes deal with events Kazigira has witnessed in the Rwandan agricultural area where his small, hilltop farm is located. It is a vantage point that allows him to chronicle the moral hazards faced as Rwanda transitions from agricultural life and towards a more urbanized culture.
“I Love You So Much, But You Refused to Marry Me (Your Beauty I Cannot Unsee)” is one such song. A heartbreaking and haunting tale detailing those in rural Rwanda who are abandoned when engagements are suddenly broken— a relatively common phenomenon due to farming families often fearing that a planned partner might prove unable to provide well enough for their offspring.
Contrastingly, the track “In the Valley of the Turkeys (The Things I’ve Seen)” is a good, old fashioned traveler tale recalling the group’s experiences playing music on the northwest coast of America while opening for Irish singer-songwriter, Glen Hansard in 2019.
As always, the band’s percussionist and harmony vocalist, Janvier Havugimana, used found objects for instruments — an empty paper cup, discarded plastic wrap, a bucket, couch cushion, and a pair of old boots.
The duo has been singing together since they were children in rural Rwanda. They officially founded the group after Janvier’s older brother— who was blind and their musical mentor— perished in the 1994 genocide. In the aftermath, the men decided that they would go in search of “the good ones” within Rwanda.
The album cover was shot on the same Greenwich Village block where The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan was taken. Since the men are unaware of Dylan’s music, it was an unintentional synchronicity that occurred as they explored the city for the first time.
The title itself Rwanda Sings with Strings, is a deliberate homage to the classic era of albums such as the Ella Sings series, Charlie Parker with Strings, and Chet Baker & Strings. As with the names of all The Good Ones’ previous albums, reference to their homeland is featured. Their debut album, Kigali Y' Izahabu (“Kigali Is Gold”) praised the nation’s capital, Kigali, and the following four have all name-checked Rwanda, the country that the men so proudly hail from.
Decidedly an underground group, The Good Ones’ renown is nonetheless evidenced by the stellar musicians who’ve collaborated with them in the past, including members of Wilco, TV on the Radio, Sleater-Kinney, My Bloody Valentine, and Fugazi, and also by the vocal supporters that they’ve attracted such as Led Zeppelin legend Robert Plant.
Kazigira states, “We are so thankful that music has taken us so many places that we never dreamed of visiting. And this new album has given us hope and really carried us through the hard times.”
