The Good Ones

Originating from Kigali, the capital of Rwanda marked by widespread poverty, the Good Ones deliver an emotionally charged and unrefined strain of folk music built around a lean combination of acoustic guitars, vocal harmonies, and intermittent hand percussion. The three musicians, performing in the regional dialect of their rural agricultural background, first came to the attention of American producer Ian Brennan in 2010; he has since guided the creation of multiple recordings, among them the 2019 release RWANDA, You Should Be Loved and the 2022 album Rwanda...You See Ghosts, I See Sky.

Adrien Kazigira, Stany Hitimana, and Jeanvier Havugimana each lived through the 1994 Rwandan genocide and adopted music as a path toward recovery. Their initial album, Kigali Y' Izahabu, was captured during a single night and issued in late 2010 by Dead Oceans, which directed a share of the proceeds to Rwandan humanitarian causes. Kazigira supplied eight of the twelve tracks. The trio employs two acoustic guitars, one functioning as a bass after its upper strings were absent on the recording date, together with harmony vocals and natural percussion. Functioning essentially as a field recording, the album was produced by Ian Brennan, whose prior credits include Tinariwen and the Malawi Mouse Boys. Brennan later returned to Rwanda to document a follow-up collection. Issued in 2015, Rwanda Is My Home introduced understated additions such as bass and hand percussion, frequently drawn from the musicians’ own agricultural implements, within the group’s otherwise austere sound.

Although captured in comparable circumstances on Kazigira’s farm, the band’s third album, RWANDA, You Should Be Loved, incorporated numerous guest contributors including Nels Cline (Wilco), Tunde Adebimpe (TV on the Radio), Corin Tucker (Sleater-Kinney), Kevin Shields (My Bloody Valentine), and Joe Lally (Fugazi). Selected from more than forty compositions penned by Kazigira, the set appeared on the ANTI- label in 2019 and coincided with the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Rwandan genocide. Brennan again traveled to Rwanda to assist with a fourth project. Once more documented on Kazigira’s farm, Rwanda...You See Ghosts, I See Sky maintained the group’s characteristically sparse approach while probing the individual experiences of its members in greater depth. Among its more optimistic love songs stood Havugimana’s reflective “My Son Has Special Needs, But There’s Nowhere for Him to Go.”