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Imani Sanga is Professor of Music in the Department of Creative Arts, formerly called Department of Fine and Performing Arts, in the College of Humanities at the University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. He teaches courses in Ethnomusicology, Philosophy of Music, Composition and Choral Music. [1] And he conducts the university choir.
Born in 1972, Imani Sanga was educated at Chimala Primary School in Mbeya Region, Kidugala Lutheran Seminary, University of Dar es Salaam [2] and the University of KwaZulu-Natal. He earned his BA in 1999 and MA in 2001, both from the University of Dar es Salaam. He earned his PhD degree from the University of KwaZulu-Natal in 2006. He wrote his PhD dissertation entitled Muziki wa Injili: Temporal and Spatial Aesthetics of Popular Church Music in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania (1980s–2005) under the supervision of Professor Beverly Parker. He spent August to December 2007 as a research scholar at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and Mount Holyoke College, through the Five College African Scholars Program, working on the manuscript for a book based on his PhD dissertation. [3] In 2009, he won a fellowship from the African Humanities Program (AHP) of the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) to work on his book on post-colonial soundscapes. [4] He is also a recipient of Kent R. Mulikin fellowship at the National Humanities Center (2019-2020).
Sanga's research and published works focus on the church music and popular music of Tanzania, in relation to the construction of gendered, religious and national identities within the context of globalisation as well as the use of music in Tanzanian Swahili literature. His work draws from a number of theoretical perspectives from African philosophy, aesthetics of music, post colonial theory, cultural theory and continental philosophy.
2010
This book focuses on Muziki wa Injili (gospel music), one of the newer music genres in Tanzania. It explores the ways in which performances of this music and practices surrounding its creation and use are related to various concepts of time and space. Through ethnographic accounts and musical analyses, he examines various changes that have taken place in Muziki wa Injili since the 1980s to 2005 and he discusses the role this music genre has played in shaping people’s experiences of events, identities and social relations (with particular reference to gendered, national and religious identities and relations) in Dar es Salaam.
1996
This book is a songbook collection of Sanga's earlier compositions and arrangements of traditional songs from various music cultures in Tanzania for church choirs.
2020
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Dar es Salaam is the largest city and financial hub of Tanzania. It is also the capital of the Dar es Salaam Region. With a population of over nine million people, Dar es Salaam is the largest city in East Africa by population and the sixth-largest in Africa. Located on the Swahili coast, Dar es Salaam is an important economic center and one of the fastest-growing cities in the world.
As it is in other countries, the music in Tanzania is constantly undergoing changes, and varies by location, people, settings and occasion. The five music genres in Tanzania, as defined by BASATA are, ngoma, dansi, kwaya, and taarab, with bongo flava being added in 2001. Singeli has since the mid-2000s been an unofficial music of uswahilini for unplanned communities in Dar es Salaam, and is the newest mainstream genre since 2020.
Bongo Flava is a nickname for Tanzanian music. The genre was developed in the 1990s, mainly as a derivative of American hip hop and traditional Tanzanian styles such as taarab and dansi. Lyrics are usually in Swahili or English.
Tanzanian Hip-hop, which is sometimes referred to Bongo Flava by many outside of Tanzania's hip hop community, encompasses a large variety of different sounds, but it is particularly known for heavy synth riffs and an incorporation of Tanzanian pop.
Following Tanganyika's independence (1961) and unification with Zanzibar (1964), leading to the formation of the state of Tanzania, President Julius Nyerere emphasised a need to construct a national identity for the citizens of the new country. To achieve this, Nyerere provided what has been regarded by some commentators as one of the most successful cases of ethnic repression and identity transformation in Africa.
Ujamaa was a socialist ideology that formed the basis of Julius Nyerere's social and economic development policies in Tanzania after it gained independence from Britain in 1961.
Singeli or sometimes called Sengeli is a Tanzanian music genre that originated with the Zaramo in the Mtogole neighborhood of the Tandale ward in Kinondoni District of Dar es Salaam Region around the mid-2000s. The genre has since the late 2010s spread throughout Tanzania, and since 2020 the surrounding Great Lakes. Singeli is a ngoma music and dance where an MC performs over fast tempo taarab music, often at between 200 and 300 beats per minute (BPM), while women dance. Male and female MCs are near equally common, however styles between MC gender typically differ significantly. Male MCs usually perform in fast-paced rap, while female MCs usually perform kwaya.
Muziki wa dansi, or simply dansi, is a Tanzanian music genre, derivative of Congolese soukous and Congolese rumba. It is sometimes called Swahili jazz because most dansi lyrics are in Swahili, and "jazz" is an umbrella term used in Central and Eastern Africa to refer to soukous, highlife, and other dance music and big band genres. Muziki wa dansi can also be referred to as Tanzanian rumba, as "african rumba" is another name for soukous.
Edwin Semzaba was a Tanzanian novelist, playwright, actor and director. He wrote his works mainly in Swahili. He taught in the Department of Fine and Performing Arts at the University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, where he taught, among other courses, creative writing and acting. He won the first award of East African Writers awarded by the Institute of Swahili Research for his novel Funke Bugebuge and the "grandchildren's adventure book writing competition" awarded by the Swedish Embassy in Tanzania (2007).
Ramazani "Remmy" Mtoro Ongala was a Tanzanian guitarist and singer. Ongala was born in Kindu, in what was the Belgian Congo at the time, and now is the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Tanzania Music Awards are national music awards held annually in Tanzania. They are also known as the Kilimanjaro Music Awards or the Kili Music Awards after their sponsor. The awards were established in 1999 by the National Arts Council (BASATA) under the Tanzanian Ministry of Education and Culture.
The Dar es Salaam Jazz Band was a Tanzanian big band from Dar es Salaam, established in 1932, that was one of the prominent muziki wa dansi bands between the 1960s and 1970s.
DDC Mlimani Park Orchestra has been one of the most popular Tanzanian muziki wa dansi bands.
Msondo Ngoma is a Tanzanian muziki wa dansi band. Having been established in 1964, it is the oldest active dansi band in Tanzania.
William Augustao Mgimwa was a Tanzanian CCM politician and Member of Parliament for Kalenga constituency from 2010 to 2014. He also served as Tanzania's Minister of Finance from 2012 to 2014.
Richa Nagar is a scholar, writer, poet, theatre-worker, translator, and editor. Nagar is Professor Emeritus of Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Minnesota, where she had a long career as an anti-disciplinary educator, theorist and writer and held the title of Professor of the College, before joining Smith College as the inaugural Gloria Steinem ’56 Endowed Chair in Women and Gender Studies. Nagar's creative and scholarly work makes multi-lingual and multi-genre contributions to transnational feminism, social geography, critical development studies, and critical ethnography. Her research has encompassed a range of topics including: politics of space, identity and community among communities of South Asian origin in Tanzania; questions of empowerment in relation to grass-roots struggles in the global South, principally with the Sangtin Kisan Mazdoor Sangathan (SKMS) in Sitapur District, India; the politics of language and social fracturing in the context of development and neo-liberal globalization; and creative praxis that uses collaboration, co-authorship, and translation to blur the borders between academic, activist, and artistic labors. She has held residential fellowships at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (CASBS) at Stanford in 2005–2006, at the Jawaharlal Nehru Institute of Advanced Study (JNIAS) at New Delhi in 2011–2012, and at the Centre for Humanities Research at the University of the Western Cape in 2013. She was named Honorary Professor at the Unit for Humanities at the Rhodes University (UHURU) at Rhodes University in South Africa in 2017, and her work has been translated into several languages including Turkish, Marathi, Italian, German and Mandarin. Nagar is a founding editor of the online journal, AGITATE! Unsettling Knowledges.
Tabora Sound Band, formerly known as Tabora Jazz, is a seminal Tanzanian muziki wa dansi band based in Tabora, Tanzania and led by guitarist Shem Ibrahim Karenga. In the 1970s, their song Dada Asha was a major hit in Tanzania and East Africa. They disbanded in the late 1970s but efforts were made to revive the band. So, by early 1980s, it was active again but disbanded in mid 1980s following damage of the instruments by an electric shock. It was later reformed by Shem Karenga as Tabora Jazz Stars. Kassimu Kaluwona, the rythim guitarist of the former band also joined. The band was based in Dar es Salaam.They mainly played classic songs of the former band, Tabora Jazz Band.
Sofia Kawawa was one of the co-founders of the Tanzania Women's Union (UWT). She was a member of the Tanganyika African National Union (TANU) party and later Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM).
Ngoma(also ng'oma or ing'oma) is a Bantu term with many connotations that encompasses music, dance, and instruments. In Tanzania ngoma also refers to events, both significant life-changing events such as the first menstruation, the birth or passing of a loved one, as well as momentary events such as celebrations, rituals, or competitions. Ngoma was the primary form of culture throughout the Great Lakes and Southern Africa. Today it is most notable genre in Tanzania, where it is deemed an official music genre by the National Arts Council (BASATA - Baraza la Sanaa la Taifa). In Tanzania, it is experienced throughout the country, performed, taught, and studied in many schools and universities. The most notable school for ngoma is the Bagamoyo Arts and Cultural Institute, which produces the most prominent chairmen (directors/conductors) and dancers.
Singeli or sometimes called Sengeli is a Tanzanian music genre that originated with the Zaramo in the Mtogole neighborhood of the Tandale ward in Kinondoni District of Dar es Salaam Region around the mid-2000s. The genre has since the late 2010s spread throughout Tanzania, and since 2020 the surrounding Great Lakes. Singeli is a ngoma music and dance where an MC performs over fast tempo taarab music, often at between 200 and 300 beats per minute (BPM), while women dance. Male and female MCs are near equally common, however styles between MC gender typically differ significantly. Male MCs usually perform in fast-paced rap, while female MCs usually perform kwaya.
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