History of Taarab music
After the spreading of Taarab from the Sultan's palace to Zanzibari weddings and other community events, the first famous female singer of taarab was Siti bint Saad. [3] [7]
In 1928, she and her band became the first from the region to make commercial recordings and was the first East African to be recorded in the Bombay HMV studios. She would go on to become one of the most famous taarab musicians of all time. [7]
Over the next several decades, bands and musicians like Bi Kidude, Mzee Yusuph, Culture Musical Club and Al-Watan Musical Club kept taarab at the forefront of the Tanzanian scene, and made inroads across the world. Playing in a similar style, Kidumbak ensembles grew popular, at least among the poor of Zanzibar, featuring two small drums, bass, violins and dancers using claves and maracas. The 1960s saw a group called the Black Star Musical Club from Tanga modernize the genre, and brought it to audiences far afield, especially Burundi and Kenya. More recently, modern taarab bands like East African Melody have emerged, as have related backbiting songs for women, called mipasho. [9]
Taarab music [10] is a fusion of pre-Islamic Swahili tunes sung in rhythmic poetic style, spiced with Arab-style melodies. It is an extremely lively art form, and immensely popular especially with women, drawing all the time from old and new sources. Taarab forms a major part of the social life of the Swahili people along the coastal areas, especially in Zanzibar, Tanga and even further in Mombasa and Malindi along the Kenya coast. [4] Wherever the Swahili speaking people travelled, Taraab culture moved with them. It has penetrated as far inland as Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi in East Africa, where taarab groups compete in popularity with western-music inspired groups. [2]
Nowadays a taarab revolution is taking place and much heated debate continues about the music which has been changed drastically by the East African Melody phenomenon. Melody, as they are affectionately known by their mostly female fans, play modern taarab, which, for the first time, is 'taarab to dance to' and features direct lyrics, bypassing the unwritten laws of lyrical subtlety of the older groups, where the meaning of their lyrics is only alluded to, and never directly inferred. [2] Today, taarab songs are explicit – sometimes even graphic – in sexual connotation, and much of the music of groups like Melody and Muungano is composed and played on keyboards, increasing portability for different venues. Also, the groups are much smaller in number than 'real taarab' orchestras and therefore more readily available to tour and play shows throughout the region and beyond. [1]
Tanzania, officially the United Republic of Tanzania, is a country in East Africa within the African Great Lakes region. It borders Uganda to the north; Kenya to the northeast; the Indian Ocean to the east; Mozambique and Malawi to the south; Zambia to the southwest; and Rwanda, Burundi, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the west. Mount Kilimanjaro, Africa's highest mountain, is in northeastern Tanzania. According to the 2022 national census, Tanzania has a population of nearly 62 million, making it the most populous country located entirely south of the equator.
Zanzibar is an insular semi-autonomous region which united with Tanganyika in 1964 to form the United Republic of Tanzania. It is an archipelago in the Indian Ocean, 25–50 km (16–31 mi) off the coast of the African mainland, and consists of many small islands and two large ones: Unguja and Pemba Island. The capital is Zanzibar City, located on the island of Unguja. Its historic centre, Stone Town, is a World Heritage Site.
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, unplanned communities in Dar es Salaam, and is the newest mainstream genre since 2020.
Tanga is a historic city and the capital of Tanga Region. The city is the most northernly port city of Tanzania to the west of the Indian Ocean on Tanga Bay. The city has a population of 393,429 in 2022. Tanga is governed by the Tanga City Council. The city is also home to the Port of Tanga. The name Tanga means "sail" in Swahili. The city is also the capital of Tanga District.
Bongo Flava is a nickname for Tanzanian music. The genre developed in the 1990s, mainly as a derivative of American hip hop and traditional Tanzanian styles such as taarab and dansi, with additional influences from reggae, R&B, and afrobeats, to form a unique style of music. Lyrics are usually in Swahili or English, although increasingly from mid 2000s there has been limited use of words from Sub-Saharan African music traditions due to the influence of Afrobeats and Kwaito with their dynamics usage of West African Pidgin English, Nigerian Pidgin or other Creole language.
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.
Fatuma binti Baraka, popularly known as Bi Kidude, was a Zanzibari-born Tanzanian Taarab singer. She has been called the "queen of Taarab and Unyago music" and was inspired by Siti binti Saad. Born in the village of Kitumba in modern-day Kati District of Unguja South Region and raised the village of Mfagimaringo, Bi Kidude was the daughter of a coconut seller in colonial Zanzibar. Bi Kidude's exact date of birth is unknown and much of her life story is uncorroborated, but she was believed to be the oldest touring singer in the world before her death. In 2005, Bi Kidude received the WOMEX award for her contribution to music and culture in Zanzibar. She was the subject of two documentaries by film maker Andrew Jones.
Swahili culture is the culture of the Swahili people inhabiting the Swahili coast. This littoral area encompasses Tanzania, Kenya, and Mozambique, as well as the adjacent islands of Zanzibar and Comoros along with some parts of Malawi and the eastern part of Democratic Republic of Congo. They speak Swahili as their native language, which belongs to the Bantu language family. Graham Connah described Swahili culture as at least partially urban, mercantile, and literate.
Swahili literature is literature written in the Swahili language, particularly by Swahili people of the East African coast and the neighboring islands. It may also refer to literature written by people who write in the Swahili language. It is an offshoot of the Bantu culture.
Siti binti Saad was a pioneering Tanzanian musician in the taarab musical style. Through her music she was also an anti-colonial activist, feminist and Swahili cultural icon of 20th century. She produced over 250 phonograph records throughout her lifetime, becoming the first East African vocalist to release commercial recordings in the 1920s and 1930s. She also added a brand-new dance and pantomime component to taarab music called "natiki," which was inspired by Indian dance. She was a trailblazer as a female performer in the genre during a time when men artists controlled the industry. She performed in a variety of languages, but most significantly in Swahili, in contrast to earlier vocalists who solely sang in Arabic. She sang in cities of the coast of Tanganyika and Zanzibar.
Swabri Mohammed, better known by his stage name Redsan, is a Kenyan reggae and ragga musician. He is one of the most well renowned ragga and dancehall artists in East Africa. His popularity has extended to the rest of Africa, and parts of Europe, United States, and the Middle East.
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.
Mr. Googz is a musician and preacher from Kenya.
Chama cha Kiswahili cha Taifa is a Kenyan institution founded in 1998 responsible for the promotion of the Swahili language in Kenya. The Founding Chair is Prof. Kimani Njogu, a graduate of Yale University's department of Linguistics.
Ebrahim Hussein is a Tanzanian playwright and poet. His first play, Kinjeketile (1969), written in Swahili, and based on the life of Kinjikitile Ngwale, a leader of the Maji Maji Rebellion, is considered "a landmark of Tanzanian theater". The play soon became one of the standard subjects for examinations in the Swahili language in Tanzania and Kenya. By 1981, it had been reprinted six times.
Up to the second half of the 20th century, Tanzanian literature was primarily oral. Major oral literary forms include folktales, poems, riddles, proverbs, and songs. The majority of the oral literature in Tanzania that has been recorded is in Swahili, though each of the country's languages has its own oral tradition. The country's oral literature is currently declining because of social changes that make transmission of oral literature more difficult and because of the devaluation of oral literature that has accompanied Tanzania's development. Tanzania's written literary tradition has produced relatively few writers and works; Tanzania does not have a strong reading culture, and books are often expensive and hard to come by. Most Tanzanian literature is orally performed or written in Swahili, and a smaller number of works have been published in English. Major figures in Tanzanian modern literature include Shaaban Robert, Muhammed Said Abdulla, Aniceti Kitereza, Ebrahim Hussein, Abdulrazak Gurnah and Penina Muhando.
Mohamed Issa Haji 'Matona is a Zanzibarian musician. He is a founder and the artistic director of Zanzibar's Dhow Countries Music Academy.
Haji Gora Haji was a Swahili-language poet, lyricist, and writer from the Zanzibar archipelago. He channeled his expansive knowledge of the culture and society of the Swahili coast, especially his homeland of Tumbatu, into his works. For his work inspired by the seascape of his home, he has been called "The Old Typhoon". He worked in a multitude of forms, from songs, stories, and epics to a full-length novel. His compositions and verse were frequently on Tanzanian radio.
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 or 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 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 and 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.
Tanzania • 
Zanzibar • 
Kenya 
