Kirenga Karengera Eric Soul

ERIC SOUL
Born in Rwanda, brought up in Brussels before moving to London, acting local Eric Soul’s love of music is on a truly global scale.

The international creative journey started in the late 80’s in Brussels, as a DJ, Eric Soul displayed his passion for music to clubs, festival, bars and events around the world, mixing effortlessly Western and African Urban beats and melodic grooves from the past, present and beyond in a skilful hip hop style. Progressively adding to music, live performances and other forms of expressive arts from an African perspective, he launched his own ‘Afrogroov’ monthly platform in South-London favourite “café” -The Ritzy in Brixton. The concept popularity spreaded fast and began creating an international demand for African music related event, he was invited to present his ever evolving formula in venues throughout London and has now exported his brand in far away cities such as Kigali, Stockholm to Johannesburg, Geneva to Zanzibar, Berlin and Lilongwe in Malawi.

Through his own event and DJ booking during the last decade, his energy was fully focused on popularising a positive, creative and edgy new image of Africa. He has appeared at the Respect (RISE) Festival in 2001 and 2002, Notthing Hill Carnival, Printemps de Bourges 2003, 2005 edition of Womex in Newcastle, in 2006, Eric lead workshops at WOMAD and DJed at the official launch party for the Football World Cup in Berlin, Sauti Za Busara festival in Tanzania 07 and played twice at Lake Of Stars festival in Malawi (06 – 07). It created many spontaneous musical encounters with a great deal of artists from around the world. To name a few, ES has worked with a diverse range of African artists such as Wunmi, Afrika Bambaata, Emmanuel Jal, Keziah Jones, K’Naan, Andy Roachford, Soothsayers, Amadou and Mariam, Daara J, Pee Froiss, Khethi, Zena Edwards, Akon and many more.

Pushing his vision of black music further, he contributed to various radio shows around the world, such as World Route on Radio 3, Ras Kame’s Homegrown on 1xtra, Metissage on Swiss radio Couleur 3, prime-time South African Rude Boy’s show on YFM as well as world music specialist show on KAYA FM presented by Nicky Blumenfeld, he co-hosted various show during a week residency celebrating Radio 10’s 3rd birthday in Kigali and was recently invited on Edu’s DNA show on 1Xtra to play some fresh beats brought from his latest African trip.

A fluency in written and oral English & French has been a distinct advantage for the ambitious Rwandan artist networker, it is a dual heritage that gave him a distinct edgy advantage that he maximised to consolidate relationships with a range of international creative and media businesses. While progressively venturing into music production, E.S has diversified his activities into promotion, music event consultancy and workshop leader, he has sold his expert creative services to various major organisations such as the BBC, The Arts Council, Creative Partnership, Oxfam, HRW, Platform’s Remember Saro Wiwa campaign and as well as UK based Rwandan charity SURF. When it comes to the design of bespoke edgy cultural events, the activist/DJ is an obvious and natural choice to assist business in entertainment, media, art, cultural, educative and charity sectors, both grassroots organisations and institution bodies creating, programming, producing and implementing bespoke musical related event that promote and celebrate a healthy, creative, intriguing, inspiring, excitingly diverse, increasingly conscious, politically aware and constantly evolving global culture.

In another power move, early 2009, the Rwandan DJ teamed up with VOXAFRICA. VoxAfrica is the first pan-African bilingual independent television. VoxAfrica intends to attract people traditionally separated by borders and languages and create a link between the continent and its Diaspora worldwide and E.S is currently developing his own music show format with the TV Channel Voxafrica to produce a weekly 26min saturday afternoon show. At the moment, the channel is distributed throughout Africa VIA SATELLITE: NSS7 and Sirius 4. Switzerland. VIA all major cable in France and Worldwide via the Internet.

Meanwhile E.S Djing at various venues across London such as Cargo, Ritzy Café, African Centre, Jazz Café, Big Chill House and the Double Club as well as various gigs abroad.