Five years ago, we started the Kigali Keys project. The idea was to build the first piano ever made in Rwanda, and the first piano to be manufactured in Africa in over 30 years. We started a blog documenting our progress. Below is a brief timeline of our major milestones. If you would like to get more involved in helping the project, you can find out how here.
It all started back in April 2017 when Marion bought a 1968 Soviet Lirika. She got talking to her friend Desiré, a carpenter, and asked whether he thought it might be possible to use it as a template to build their own piano. Desiré was up for the challenge, and so it began...
We knew that we needed to cast the iron string frame first. Without this, the rest of the project would be impossible. It would be too expensive to import one. Their first attempt didn't go according to plan...
But then a local metal foundry, Chillington, stepped in. They usually make industrial-sized coffee grinders, but turned their workshop over to piano building. They were able to replicate the string frame. A journalist came to visit and we were even featured in an NPR article.
It was really important to us to try to find local materials for making the piano as importing to Rwanda increases the cost and post takes a long time to arrive. We teamed up with Ocean Soul in Kenya to make hammers from recycled flip-flops.
All of this was funded by an Indiegogo campaign. The end of 2017 and the beginning of 2018 were taken up by trying to source strings. It took a really long time to work out the string sizes we needed, and even longer to find anywhere willing to sell them to us. The piano industry is kind of cliquey and many suppliers won't sell to individuals. But eventually we managed to source steel strings from EKA in the UK and the bass strings and tuning pins from Hellerbass in Germany. We are also hugely grateful to Key-sure in Australia who helped us to work out the size of the steel strings we needed.
We were featured on the BBC World Service and Desiré was also interviewed for local news site IGIHE.
By August 2018 the case was built and the tuning pins were in. It was starting to look like an actual piano.
Then the piano headed to Marion's house and we invited our friends over to help string it. Can you spot a young Andy Mwag in there?
Meanwhile, we took all the hammers off the action and Desiré was able to build a replica from wood. This will act as a template going forward.
By the time 2019 rolled around, we had made good progress, but then things slowed down for us. Due to Marion's work commitments and Desiré's family commitments, not a lot got done that year. We got a bit artistic, turning the old Lirika bass strings into a work of art by local artist Rukundo...
...and we had a go at redesigning the Lirika, making her over in purple and black...
...but by the end of the year we'd only really managed to complete the key bed and add the balance rail pins. Every project has its slow periods.
...but by the end of the year we'd only really managed to complete the key bed and add the balance rail pins. Every project has its slow periods.
The new year brought with it a new lease of life and we burst into action (ho ho), with Paulin making an entire set of keys and installing them on the bed.
We finally got to try out those flip-flop hammers in another piano, and discovered that they worked rather well!
Unfortunately, we also discovered that testing the new piano wasn't going to be as easy as simply putting the old action into it. We tried, but it just wouldn't align.
We were all ready to start working on that, when COVID happened, and we all went into lockdown for most of the year. The lockdowns were on and off throughout 2021, so it was another slow year. With the help of our friend Olivier at FabLab, we were able to 3D print some of the action parts in plastic, but we soon realised that it wouldn't be strong enough to survive in a piano. It was an interesting experiment, though.
By 2022, we had completely lost our stride and were mostly fixing other people's pianos. Marion registered Kigali Keys as a separate business in January 2023 to focus on piano tuning and repair, but the piano building project had completely stalled whilst everyone struggled to get back to daily life after the pandemic. Our funds had run low and our motivation dwindled. We do plan to continue this year and still welcome interest from those willing to help.
TO BE CONTINUED...