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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 five million people, Dar es Salaam is the largest city in East Africa 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.
Swahili, also known by its local name Kiswahili, is a Bantu language originally spoken by the Swahili people, who are found primarily in Tanzania, Kenya and Mozambique. Estimates of the number of Swahili speakers, including both native and second-language speakers, vary widely, generally ranging from 60 million to 150 million; most of its native speakers reside in Tanzania.
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.
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.
Shaaban bin Robert, also known as Shaaban Robert, was a Tanzanian poet, author, and essayist who supported the preservation of Tanzanian verse traditions. Robert is celebrated as one of the greatest Tanzanian Swahili thinkers, intellectuals and writers in East Africa and has been called "poet laureate of Swahili" and is also known as the "Father of Swahili." He is also honoured as the national poet.
The Gusii language is a Bantu language spoken in Kisii and Nyamira counties in Nyanza Kenya, whose headquarters is Kisii Town,. It is spoken natively by 2.2 million people, mostly among the Abagusii. Ekegusii has only two dialects: The Rogoro (upper-side) and Maate (lower-side) dialects. Phonologically, they differ in the articulation of /t/. Most of the variations existing between the two dialects are lexical. The two dialects can refer to the same object or thing using different terms. An example of this is the word for cat. While one dialect calls a cat ekemoni, the other calls it ekebusi . Another illustrating example can be found in the word for sandals. While the Rogoro word for sandals is chisiripasi , the Maate dialect word is chitaratara . Many more lexical differences manifest in the language. The Maate dialect is spoken in Tabaka and Bogirango. Most of the other regions use the Rogoro dialect, which is also the standard dialect of Ekegusii.
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.
The Zinza are a Bantu ethnolinguistic group from the southwestern Islands on Lake Victoria, Tanzania. The Zinza people also lived on the shores of Geita Region's Chato District and Geita District and Mwanza Region. In 1987, the Zinza population was estimated to number 138,000.
The Kahe are an ethnic and linguistic group based southeast of Moshi in Kilimanjaro Region Tanzania. The Kahe language, or Kikahe, is in the Chagga cluster of Bantu languages. Three dialects are recognized: Kimwangaria, Msengoni and Kichangareni. Kikahe is spoken by 9,130 people, and is one of the smaller language communities in Tanzania.
Baraza la Kiswahili la Taifa is a Tanzanian institution responsible with regulating and promoting the Kiswahili language.
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).
Penina Muhando, also known as Penina Mlama, is a Tanzanian Kiswahili playwright, a theorist and practitioner of Theatre for Development in Tanzania.
Martha Mlagala Mvungi was a Tanzanian novelist, short-story writer, academic and teacher. She wrote in both Kiswahili and English.
West Kilimanjaro, or West Chaga, is a Bantu language of Tanzania spoken by the Chaga people.
Prof. Kulikoyela Kanalwanda Kahigi is a Tanzanian CHADEMA politician and was a Member of Parliament for Bukombe constituency during 2010 - 2015. He is now back at the University of Dar es Salaam, teaching Linguistics in the Institute of Kiswahili Studies.
Taasisi ya Taaluma za Kiswahili, known by its acronym TATAKI, is a research body dedicated to the research of the Kiswahili language and literature at the University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania.
Farouk Mohamedhusein Tharia Topan is the director of the Swahili Centre at the Aga Khan University. He is a specialist in the language and literature of the Swahili people. He has taught at the University of Dar es Salaam, the Institute of Ismaili Studies, and the School of Oriental and African Studies.
May Lenna Balisidya Matteru was a Tanzanian author writing in the Swahili language.
Krzysztof Buzalski is a Polish diplomat in the rank of Minister-Counsellor specializing in relations with Sub-Saharan Africa countries, since 3 December 2017 serving as Poland ambassador to Tanzania.
Martha A. S. Qorro is a linguist and an associate professor at the Centre for Communication Studies of the University of Dar es Salaam, known for her research into the use of the Kiswahili language as preferable language of instruction in Tanzania, and the Iraqw language.
References
- ↑ Zinza at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
- ↑ Jouni Filip Maho, 2009. New Updated Guthrie List Online
