Meet Makeda, Rwanda’s finest female DJ
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NewsTranscript
00:00 [Music]
00:06 So I consider myself someone who likes to create and to entertain and to share.
00:13 And I think that's where all the different things that I do kind of meet,
00:18 because when you look at journalism or when you look at DJing or presenting or anything like that,
00:25 it's kind of sharing with people, informing people, entertaining people, and that's what I like to do.
00:32 [Music]
00:41 I was a presenter and a producer on Rise and Shine Rwanda, which was like a morning show,
00:49 which was lifestyle and news and different stuff like that.
00:52 And I was also on the radio, but that was an entertainment show.
00:56 But I do kind of consider myself a bit of a journalist, even what I'm doing now,
01:00 which is producing for Journal.Rw, because we still have to kind of tell a story and do research,
01:07 and it's the same kind of process as what a journalist does.
01:12 It's really not easy to combine the three different cultures that kind of make me up, right?
01:19 There's Rwandan, there's Jamaican, and there's American, and all three are so different.
01:25 But it's fun just figuring out how, you know what I mean?
01:31 Growing up on that side and now coming here and all of the culture shock,
01:36 maybe that I have kind of been experiencing, it's been fun.
01:41 It hasn't been stressful in any way. It's been a lot of fun.
01:44 I don't know how I've managed to mix it all together, but it's been fun.
01:49 With DJing, I started when I came to Rwanda, actually.
02:00 So I was going out a lot. It was summertime when people go out.
02:05 And I found that a lot of the DJs just weren't playing some of my favorite genres of music
02:10 and some of my favorite artists. And I decided just to kind of throw some parties.
02:15 I asked a friend of mine if he could just show me the basics, how to mix on virtual DJ and stuff like that.
02:23 And I asked some friends of mine who had a club if I could just invite some friends and DJ.
02:30 And they said yes. And I just got so much encouragement that I kind of just kept it going.
02:39 I think the outside world makes a bigger deal out of being a female DJ than what it really is.
02:47 I think sometimes people forget that females are just humans like everyone else.
02:53 So I guess it's just the experience of being a DJ.
02:58 Now one thing that I can say that I used to struggle with a little bit before
03:02 was that some people used to kind of say, you know,
03:05 "Oh well, young girls shouldn't be out in the night and you shouldn't be in nightclubs"
03:11 and different things like that. But that's kind of died down now.
03:15 And I really appreciate that because it means that the people, the other female DJs who are coming up,
03:21 maybe won't have to face that.
03:30 From what I've learned, I've kind of learned to appreciate a culture for what it is
03:35 rather than trying to say why something is the way it is or why isn't it the way that it is.
03:42 Before I used to kind of ask questions and say, "Well, how come they do it like that?"
03:48 or "How come when I would go to different countries, you know?"
03:51 And spending this much time here in what used to be a brand new culture,
03:55 it has kind of taught me to just appreciate a culture for what it is.
04:00 Well, I'm engaged, so yes. I would like a family in the future.
04:13 Yeah.
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