Corneille
A star in the French-speaking world, the Rwandan genocide survivor makes his English-language debut

Courtesy of Kevin Canning Management

The striking thing about speaking with Corneille Nyungura is learning just how ordinary his life was until his parents, two brothers and sister were murdered as he hid behind a couch during the Rwandan genocide of 1994. Born in Germany to Rwandan university students who would later become an engineer and economist, Corneille had what sounds like a conventional upbringing until his existence was upended at age 17.

“It wasn’t a traditional African life. We were brought up in the capital Kigali, and both of my parents, having studied in Germany, raised us on a Western model,” he recalls over the phone from Boston, where he’s taking part in a music seminar. “We were part of the elite, so we were fortunate enough to have parabolic antennas, and could keep up with what was happening in the States and Europe.”

Being a member of the privileged Tutsis (there is no real tribal distinction between Tutsis and Hutus, claims Corneille), unfortunately, also made his family
a target when the call to kill all Tutsis went out after Hutu President Juvénal Habyarimana was assassinated. “I personally had no inkling of anything,” Corneille continues. “People who are about to be persecuted or touched by a humanitarian crisis—it’s unexpected the way it strikes. If you talk to Jews who were in Europe in ’36, ’37, ’38, all the signs were out there that something was happening, but they will all tell you that they thought it was going to be OK. That was the situation we were in.”

Miraculously spared the rampage that claimed 800,000 lives, Corneille escaped on foot to neighboring Congo, from where he made his way to Germany—where friends of his parents adopted him. Three years of high school were then followed by a move to Montreal for university studies, and it was in Quebec’s bustling metropolis that Corneille was finally able to pursue his first love: music.
Reared on a diet of African-American and French music, Corneille first formed a band called ONE (Original New Element), and when that split up in 2001, got to work on his first solo album. It was 2002’s Parce Qu’on Vient de Loin that was to propel the dashing Corneille onto a worldwide stage. With its contemporary R&B feel and message of resilience in the face of tragedy, the album was a hit on both French-speaking sides of the Atlantic, notching over a million in sales.

But its success also posed a dilemma. “With fame came a responsibility to appear normal and balanced, and emotionally to be an example,” he says. “Because when you’re famous, you’re put in the seat of being a role model, whether you like it or not. Except I was not put in the seat of a role model of being a fashionista or something, I was a role model for resilience and survival, which is very heavy to bear. I took it to heart and completely forgot my own personal healing.”

The conversation then takes the obvious turn to post-traumatic stress disorder.“I hadn’t started getting over [the loss] until a couple of months ago, actually. For 12 years I’d been in denial. Psychologists will tell you that one of the ways to get out of the situation is to completely block it out and become someone else, and another is to lose it and have real, physical, traumatic symptoms. I went the first way and completely blocked it off and indulged in classic post-traumatic behaviors that were not expressed in an emotional way.”

It was meeting the woman who recently became his wife that led Corneille to seek help. “As a result of finding love, it all exploded, and for the first time I sought psychological help,” he explains in his low key but articulate manner. “I’d found someone who was worth fighting for, and for the first time I started listening to myself and wondering if I was healed. I started thinking, ‘What if things come up again and jeopardize what I have with this person?’ That’s when I started dealing with the loss, and that’s all really very recent. If you look at interviews of me from before, I would talk about it in a completely detached way, as if the story weren’t mine.”

And appropriately, it’s the subject of love that informs his English-language debut, The Birth of Cornelius, due out in Japan next month on Sony. “Everything that I’m talking to you about is recent so most of it is in the English album,” he says. “On the two French albums I talked about what I went through, but merely telling a story. I wasn’t being introspective enough. I truly have been introspective on this English album—and the most honest I’ve been on a record.

“With the first album I talked about what happened in Rwanda and about my solitude, but didn’t dig deep. With the second album came the responsibility of an artist who is now successful to be a role model. Not a lot of African artists have that status in the West, so I felt I had to start focusing on more universal notions, talking about immigrants and other social issues.”

The Birth of Cornelius is packed with love songs, which seems the obvious message for Corneille’s sweet voice, with its echoes of Marvin Gaye and Al Green. But notwithstanding his newfound love, many of the songs also bear traces of doubt and worry. “With the new album I went deeper and talked about love, which is a very ironic thing because it’s the biggest preoccupation of our daily lives, but if you write a love song all the artistic snobs make a mockery of it. Yet we forget that relationships are what take up the most time in our lives and make us happy or sad. I’ve decided to take that subject from my personal experience, which is a very particular one because I only experienced true love fairly late.”

At the same time, Corneille’s experience of genocide is still an unavoidable presence. “Of course there are other subjects,” he says. “‘A Man of this World’ is my take on race. I have very special emotions on the subject, as I’ve been a victim of hate crimes from one black person to another black person, and not only from one black to another but from someone who has the same historical background. Racism is a subject that goes beyond black and white or Christians and Muslims. To say at the end of the day ‘We are all people’ sounds like a very vague notion, but that’s what it all is.”

The Birth of Cornelius will be released on June 20.

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