Parade of One Booking

Rwandan Suite:

Listen to selections from the Rwandan Suite

Rwandan Suite is a five part composition in which saxophonist and clarinetist Jeremy Danneman chronicles his experiences leading up to and during his project in the summer of 2009 in which he gave a series of street performances in Rwanda to commemorate the 15th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide and celebrate the growing peace. Danneman performs the piece unaccompanied on alto saxophone, baritone saxophone, and clarinet. Rwandan Suite is composed of short vamps and motifs that give way to longer improvised flights of the imagination. Due to the largely improvised nature of the piece, its duration can last anywhere from twenty to forty minutes, depending on the circumstances.

Part 1: The Birthday March

On March 21st, 2009 Danneman embarked on a multi-borough parade in New York City to celebrate the 29th anniversary of his arrival on planet Earth. He played his saxophone while crossing the Pulaski, 59th Street, and Williamsburg Bridges, in addition to delivering a "Unite the Nations Concert," in front of the United Nations. During the course of the parade, Danneman was able to reach an audience as diverse as New York City itself, and he transcended the dozens of divergent social scenes that dominate the musical venues in the city. While winding through Stuyvesant Town, the East Village and Tompkins Square Park, Danneman, with friends and strangers following him, spontaneously composed a motif on alto sax that he came to call, The Birthday March. Inspired by among other things, his will to bring his music to different audiences, Danneman decided a few weeks later to embark on a full month of street performances in Rwanda, and by August he had arrived. The Birthday March was well-received when Danneman performed it for Rwandan audiences. Since it contains a few "eastern" tonalities, some Rwandans found it exotic.

Part 2: Ernst

When Danneman told his then eighty-seven year old grandfather that he'd be performing on the street in Rwanda, he was immediately advised to compose a theme that would be repeated throughout the month. "Something easy to remember and that people can hum along to," said Danneman's grandfather. The resulting motif came to be called Ernst, the first name of Danneman's grandfather, and it was performed for the first time at Kimironko Market in Kigali, the day after Danneman arrived.

Part 3: Murambi Doina

The Murambi Technical School is now a memorial site where thousands of Rwandans were massacred in the genocide. Many mummified bodies are displayed in the classrooms. Danneman visited the memorial in the summer of 2009, and performed a clarinet piece there, with his tour guide, a survivor of the massacre, as his audience.

Danneman performs Murambi Doina on the clarinet in the Klezmer idiom, a style forged by the Jews of Eastern Europe prior to the Holocaust. The grandson of Holocaust survivors, Danneman was inspired to go to Rwanda out of sympathy for those who have experienced the turmoil of genocide. Murambi Doina is a slow and pensive melody Danneman wrote after returning to the USA. It is the most structured of the five parts in the Rwandan Suite.

Part 4: Gisenyi Beach

During the course of his street performances in Rwanda, Danneman had little time to think much about the music he was playing. He was so busy watching his audience, as they were just as foreign to him as he was to them. But in the city of Gisenyi on the shore of Lake Kivu, Danneman found himself experiencing what felt like a brief musical climax, while surrounded by an audience of young boys playing on the beach. Gisenyi Beach is an outgrowth of a short motif that Danneman was playing for the children. Danneman often employs extended saxophone technics such as overtone control and circular breathing for this piece.

Part 5: Zana Inzana Nzane Iyindi Mwana Wa Maman

During Danneman's final weekend in Rwanda, he was featured in a concert at the Goethe Institute in which he collaborated with local musicians. One of the songs they performed was Zana Inzana Nzane Iyindi Mwana Wa Maman, which translated literally from Kinyarwanda means Bring Beer I Bring Another a Child of My Mother. It is a song of friendship, specifically about buying beer for one's friends, and it is a Rwandan classic. Since then, Danneman has created his own variation on the theme, adapted for unaccompanied saxophone. For Danneman, Zana Inzana Nzane Iyindi Mwana Wa Maman is a song about friendship and the ties that hold people together, in stark contrast to the bigotry that can so devastate societies around the world.

For more information or if you would like to organize a performance of Rwandan Suite, please email Jeremy Danneman at :

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Lectures

In the summer of 2009, saxophonist and clarinetist Jeremy Danneman traveled to Rwanda to give a series of street performances entitled the Rwanda 15 Parade of One. His objective was to commemorate the Rwandan genocide of 1994 and to celebrate the growing peace there. As the grandchild of Holocaust survivors, Danneman was moved by the similarities between the stories of his grandparent's generation and the tales from Rwanda in the 1990s. He is also inspired by the peace that Rwandans have achieved since then, which is a lesson to all nations. Needless to say, Danneman found a very stimulating environment to develop his solo, unaccompanied style of sax performance, a daring and unusual venture. Danneman was called a "man on a personal mission" by the Rwandan New Times for his efforts. In addition to street performances, Danneman collaborated with local musicians in a concert sponsored by the Goethe Institute.

Since returning, Danneman has developed a lecture/performance in which he plays saxophone, speaks, and shows slides about his experiences in Rwanda. Audiences are entertained and educated by tales of how Danneman first conceived his tour of Rwanda and how we was received there. The lecture is ideal for music departments, African Studies departments, Jewish organizations, human rights groups, and much more.

Hear the audio of Jeremy's lecture here. Go to the "Content Selections" bar on the left and select Jeremy Danneman. To see the slideshow of photos from Jeremy's trip click here.

For more information, please contact :

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