The Music (Tanzania Heritage Project)

Bio

The music is a collection of recordings under the Tanzania Heritage Project. It contains recordings such as ‘Wagogo Tribal Music’; this recording was made in the field by Tanzanian ethnomusicologists using portable mikes. One can get a sense of the polyrhythmic base from which the genre arose. Of course, the Wagogo are just one tribe out of more than a hundred, and a lot of the other tribal music doesn’t sound anything like this.

It also has a collection of Afro-rhumba, imported from West Africa to Cuba and then brought back to East Africa beginning in the 30s. This began a huge rhumba craze throughout the continent, which lasted for several decades. A good example is then ‘Kiko Kids – Mambo Rumba’ recording of 1963, and is basically indistinguishable from what one might hear in a pre-Castro Havana nightclub, except that it is sung in Swahili instead of Spanish. The name of the track is a sort of polyglot pun: “Mambo” is the name of the famous Cuban dance, and the traditional Swahili greeting.

One other recording is the ‘Western Jazz – Title UnknownMusicians’. The song changes course like four times and features two polyrhythmic guitars, an independent vocal melody, and an electric bass player who is just all over the place.

TZDar es Salaam, Tanzania

Contact

+255682143200
Tanzania Heritage Project
Profile added by Ano Shumba on 30 Sep 2015
Advert
Apply for showcases