A conversation with the youngest Dj in Rwanda | Meet The Professor
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#IGIHE #Rwanda
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NewsTranscript
00:00 (upbeat music)
00:02 I started DJing when I was about five years old.
00:20 I just moved to Rwanda for my birthday.
00:23 I was mentored by a DJ named Gilo.
00:29 He usually DJ, like mentors girls for DJing,
00:34 but he decided to mentor me also.
00:40 At first I didn't have a DJ console,
00:45 so I used Gilo's, but now I have one.
00:50 My first instrument was the piano,
00:59 and I think my mom bought it, yeah.
01:02 Ever since I was a baby, I heard music.
01:05 When I was born, the first music I ever heard was jazz,
01:10 so I like slow, chill songs.
01:13 And even when I was a baby,
01:17 when my grandma came from the school
01:23 that my grandma directed,
01:28 like she was the director,
01:30 when she came back from school,
01:34 she would always play the guitar.
01:36 She used to be a very professional guitar player.
01:39 Yeah, I wanted to be like her when I grow up.
01:44 I didn't realize it was in my blood
01:47 for five years, I think,
01:50 because my dad was a programmer,
01:56 and I suddenly decided to learn how to code,
02:01 so I went to a robotics school
02:07 in Kigali Public Library.
02:09 It's closed now.
02:11 And I learned a lot about coding on Scratch,
02:17 and now I'm a professional at Scratch.
02:20 And then I decided to learn some other things,
02:23 like Python, JavaScript,
02:28 code.org,
02:31 Marty the Robot,
02:34 Ozbots.
02:37 I am the brand ambassador of Zorbots,
02:42 and it's actually quite fun.
02:45 I get to have my own Marty the Robot version
02:52 two, assembled.
02:54 Actually, it was already assembled.
02:56 The second version I talked about
02:58 was my first Marty the Robot.
03:01 My mom, she loves music.
03:03 Most of the time I teach her Kinyarwanda.
03:07 She doesn't even know how to say one.
03:09 (speaking in foreign language)
03:14 I learned from my mom that
03:15 it's really important
03:22 to be African.
03:22 (laughing)
03:23 - To be African.
03:24 - Yeah, like,
03:25 I don't know how to explain it,
03:29 but it's good to be African.
03:32 And I even made her a Pan-African bracelet from school
03:37 for Mother's Day yesterday.
03:41 I made it out of yarn strings,
03:44 and I made out of five colors,
03:49 even though the Pan-African flag is three colors,
03:52 I added two more.
03:54 So red, black, white, dark green, and light green.
03:59 And it's double-sided.
04:03 One side is,
04:06 one side is stripey,
04:08 and the other side is dotty.
04:11 It's just the same stripes,
04:13 but then it has different colored dots.
04:17 Actually, I wanna be five things at the same time.
04:21 - Which are?
04:22 - A zoologist, which I want to be most.
04:28 A musician.
04:29 A roboticist.
04:31 A scientist.
04:33 And a programmer.
04:37 But a programmer
04:39 codes the robots.
04:44 Especially in JavaScript.
04:47 But I don't learn any Kinyarwanda,
04:48 so my Kinyarwanda's breaking up.
04:51 And this is my mom.
04:54 - Yeah, Xavier's always been into so many different things.
04:58 Honestly, since birth, he's been into music.
05:01 I remember when he was first born,
05:03 we had one of these play mats that babies lay on,
05:06 and at the end of the mat, where his feet were,
05:09 there was a piano.
05:10 And at the top, there were little dangly things for babies.
05:13 So we bring him home three days after he's born,
05:16 and his feet, I have a video of it,
05:19 he's kicking the piano and actually making it play music.
05:22 And so we saw that, and we're like,
05:24 okay, this boy's into music.
05:26 - I love music.
05:27 - And then I always had a little piano,
05:29 we've always had djembes, like drums in our house,
05:33 we've always had guitars.
05:36 I grew up with that, so he's always been exposed to it.
05:39 So at an early age, I could see it.
05:41 I would say when he was four years old,
05:44 he really, he took a class, he took a djembe class,
05:48 he took a dance class, a hip hop dance class.
05:52 So I started to see that this is something
05:54 that he could get into.
05:55 The first thing Xavier wants to do is put on music.
06:00 So imagine in the morning, if you're a quiet, quiet soul,
06:04 or versus, if you were to work in my house,
06:07 wake up and he wants to hear some kind of music.
06:09 It doesn't have to be loud music,
06:11 it could be kind of a calming,
06:14 or it could even be Afro beats, it could be different.
06:18 - I usually just sleep.
06:22 I usually just sleep, and when I wake up, I'm so tired.
06:26 And I, so that it can wake me up.
06:31 The album that is really waking me up
06:36 is The Greatest Showman, Reimagined.
06:39 - He likes musicals as well.
06:41 - I love a lot of music.
06:42 I like, basically all the music in the world
06:47 that has electronic sounds.
06:49 So I also like a little bit of rock,
06:55 even though it has no electronic sounds.
07:00 And then country's just regular.
07:02 I don't like it.
07:04 I actually see Xavier following many paths
07:07 along his journey.
07:08 I don't know if he'll do all of it at the same time,
07:12 but I think there are gonna be different seasons.
07:14 So music may not be his singular focus for his whole life,
07:18 but he'll always play music.
07:19 I see it as a hobby, an interest, a passion.
07:22 And this example I saw growing up, actually.
07:26 So my parents are musicians at heart,
07:29 but they always had other careers.
07:31 So my dad was working in a petroleum refinery,
07:33 he'd always play the guitar, he'd always play the drums.
07:36 He'd always do that, but then he'd go into the office.
07:38 So watching people be able to balance both,
07:41 I know it's possible.
07:43 Xavier's an excellent reader.
07:45 He started reading at 18 months, fluently by himself.
07:48 So I know his academics are very strong,
07:51 so I feel comfortable in the other things that he does.
07:54 So I have no worry.
07:55 I also am the type of person,
07:56 I don't see contradictions in different subject matters.
08:02 I see them as complementary
08:04 instead of being a contradiction.
08:06 - I still remember when mom showed me that video
08:12 of me reciting the word fish.
08:15 - So I have, you know, I would document when he was little
08:19 as he's learning to read.
08:20 So he's seen all these videos of him reading
08:23 as a really young child.
08:24 So Xavier is hooked on books.
08:27 Even at the dinner table, he wants to bring a book.
08:29 So he's very much excited about a lot of different things.
08:33 It's never one thing.
08:34 So yeah, I don't have any worries.
08:36 Like he's doing well in school.
08:38 He's doing well in his passion and his hobbies.
08:41 It's all balancing out.
08:42 - I'm also excited about company.
08:45 - Yes.
08:48 Having people over.
08:49 He's an extrovert, if you haven't noticed.
08:51 Yeah.
08:52 And with the pandemic,
08:53 like we don't have as many people over, but sometimes, yeah.
08:57 I would say allow your children to explore different things.
09:00 I believe that children should have a range of opportunities
09:04 and then they may land on one or two or three or four.
09:08 For me, it's neither here nor there.
09:10 You can explore.
09:11 - I chose five.
09:12 - He just chose five.
09:13 And so, yeah.
09:14 Will Xavier become a doctor?
09:16 Maybe.
09:18 That would be awesome.
09:19 Would Xavier become a really famous musician?
09:22 Maybe. - I don't want to be that.
09:23 - There's lots of possibilities.
09:24 But so far, at age eight, I can tell he loves the sciences.
09:29 He loves music.
09:31 Let's see what happens.
09:33 He does very, very well in like structured environments.
09:36 And he also does well in a freestyle environment as well.
09:39 So I'm just letting him grow and he'll continue to grow
09:43 and I'll just guide him.
09:45 But it's very much Xavier led.
09:47 So people ask me all the time, are you a DJ?
09:50 I'm like, no.
09:51 I don't know anything about DJing.
09:53 Nothing at all.
09:54 So I want to comment a little bit on what you're saying
09:56 about kind of taking that one path for your life.
09:59 So I think that's like my parents' generation.
10:02 They, like my mom's been in early childhood development work
10:06 for 40 plus years.
10:08 But the future is not really like that.
10:10 We have to be more flexible.
10:12 We have to be more nimble.
10:13 As we can see with the pandemic,
10:15 things, industries are changing
10:17 because if your industry shifts, what are you going to do
10:20 if you only know one path?
10:23 So for me, it's really important to know several paths
10:25 because that will ensure that you continue to work
10:28 and have an impact in the future.
10:30 So what I do is my background
10:33 and what I've studied was international development.
10:35 I've spent several years working in development,
10:39 either working for the government at that level.
10:42 I've also worked for NGOs, grassroots organizations,
10:46 grassroots funders, like I've worked
10:48 in the human rights space.
10:49 And then I took a leave from government
10:52 to work in the private sector,
10:54 since the private sector should be the driver of the economy,
10:58 not the public sector.
10:59 So I thought, well, if a lot of aid is coming into Liberia,
11:02 obviously we need the economy to grow.
11:06 And the answer isn't aid.
11:07 The answer is the private sector.
11:09 So I went into manufacturing.
11:11 So I've also done that.
11:12 I started a fashion brand.
11:13 I run that and I have a consulting business.
11:16 Yeah, he surpasses me though.
11:18 When I was eight, I was not as smart,
11:19 half as smart as Xavier.
11:21 What sports do you like to play?
11:22 'Cause we have a lot of balls.
11:23 We have lots of things going on.
11:26 I like soccer, basketball,
11:31 but I am more connected to badminton.
11:35 I play it mostly every day, I think.
11:40 Who do you play with?
11:42 The security guard.
11:43 And we also have like a Wakanda game.
11:45 We have Sorry, we have Connect Four.
11:47 We have Monopoly Star Wars version.
11:51 Yeah, that's true.
11:52 And we have Monopoly Grab and Go, which is not very good.
11:57 It like only has one question card and none other cards.
12:02 That ruins the whole game.
12:09 Well, you have a lot of options.
12:10 So he has a lot of different games.
12:11 Yeah, I would say that it hasn't been hard.
12:14 I think the key thing is to find your community here.
12:17 So we don't have family community here,
12:19 but we have good friends here.
12:21 I think that's really what's important.
12:23 Liberian values or Xavier lived in the US for five years.
12:27 Values I wouldn't say are different.
12:29 I would say that language obviously
12:31 can be a challenge at times, but yeah,
12:34 we're on the continent, we feel good.
12:37 Almost four years.
12:38 Yeah, but for me, I was in and out of Kigali,
12:42 like doing work when we were based in the US
12:45 and then we moved.
12:46 I like Kigali because it's African.
12:51 And it has like a lot of stuff I didn't know about Africa.
12:59 I can learn a lot of stuff about Africa and Rwanda.
13:05 I like the US because I have a lot of friends there.
13:11 And I think even more than in Rwanda.
13:16 And I really like company.
13:20 I felt really proud of him.
13:21 Yeah, I've seen him perform for three years,
13:23 but still each time I get a little bit nervous.
13:26 Yeah, kind of like, I hope everything goes well.
13:28 Yeah, but I'm confident.
13:30 He performs here all the time.
13:31 Like he's constantly just like trying different things,
13:33 scratching, playing, doing different things.
13:36 And I think that's really important.
13:38 Trying different things, scratching, playing,
13:39 doing different things.
13:40 So at least when he's up there,
13:43 he's confident because he's done it before.
13:44 It's not new to him.
13:45 And then, and then it will go to fast.
13:51 Like it goes to calm and then it goes to fast.
13:55 Bye.
13:56 Bye.
13:57 (guitar strumming)