Zanzibar: The Moon and the Music
October 30, 2008
The radio, wired up to a car battery, crackles into life in the near darkness outside the first house of Kizimbani village, where a small crowd has gathered to listen for the moon.
Above us the sky is pitch black, with not even a star visible. The new moon, if it puts in an appearance tonight, will mean the end of a long hard month of fasting for Zanzibar’s predominantly Muslim population. During daylight hours in the lunar month of Ramadan the faithful may not eat, drink, smoke – or have sex. Only the sick, young children and travellers are exempt. In temperatures that rise to over 90 degrees Fahrenheit in the wavy heat of the afternoons, giving up food and water is no token gesture. From tonight, though, an exhausting twenty-eight days of abstinence is up and the party can begin. Or can it?
If the new moon we’re all waiting for chooses to show her face in the blue-black darkness above us, the celebrations for which planning is already well under way will commence first thing in the morning. Electricity poles are being strung up around fields, girls and women have been pounding red henna leaves and black picco to paint their hands and feet for days now, and every store in town has been full to bursting with last-minute shoppers stocking up on bottles of orange Fanta, cuts of meat, bags of Ugali and starched nylon frocks. The children are worked up to the point of hysteria and the atmosphere of suppressed excitement and anticipation crackles in the hot air.
No moon, however, means that everyone must wait another 24 hours before breaking their fast. Such an important event cannot be left to chance – so not only is everyone on Zanzibar scanning the skies for their own moon, but we’re all gathered eagerly around the nearest radio, waiting for the government to announce a new moon sighting above any part of Tanzania or coastal Kenya. This is the ancient kingdom of the Swahilis, whose modern-day inhabitants still retain the faith brought here by the Arabic races whose fast-sailing dhows once controlled the East African coast and its lucrative slave trade.
As the night wears on it becomes apparent that no moon is to be forthcoming, in Zanzibar or anywhere else. Anticlimax prevails, and another hot, thirsty day goes by before the longed-for sickle appears on cue above the lights of Blues restaurant in the harbour and a cheer goes up from the ragged groups of watchers along the water’s edge. For the next five days and nights, it’s time for a party that promises to put the tourists’ Millennium celebrations of a week ago firmly in the shade. ‘Dancing tonight’ says my friend Hisdori mysteriously to me at lunchtime. ‘Beer tonight’ says his mother, usually the picture of demure matronhood in her kanga and headscarf, but today with a gleam in her eye and freshly painted henna on the palms of her hands.
For most of the year Dole is nothing more than a rather greasy looking patch of ground next to the road which runs to the spice plantation at Kizimbani. Tonight, however, it is lit up with an eerie whitish glow from the dozens of hurricane lamps hanging off the stalls selling tiny packets of cassava chips, plastic hair decorations and big thermos buckets full of dark purple tamarind juice. Kids run in circles playing obscure games, or dance with their siblings to the muted beat of the disco.
As twilight becomes night, a procession of tiny inert bodies – draped over the handlebars of their mothers’ bicycles, or sitting asleep bolt upright at the front of their fathers’ motorbikes – begin to leave the party. Even preparing to go to Dole is an exhausting process – it takes all day and involves plaiting hair, painting henna and climbing gingerly into stiff nylon party dresses that crackle with static electricity. Little boys don’t escape, stepping cautiously around in a variety of outfits and styles, from shiny three piece suits à la Bugsy Malone to full English football strips, complete with socks.
Some boys go the whole hog, dressing up as little girls in a sort of African ‘trick or treat’. Adorned in kangas, with rags stuffed under their skirts for maximum wiggle and scarlet cochineal smeared on pouting lips, they proceed from house to house to drum and dance in return for cake and sweet lemongrass tea.
Now, however, the children glow in the dark like fireflies as they plod up the road behind their parents, drooping with fatigue. Most have had their finery captured for posterity in the tents set up around the periphery of the party by professional photographers, who bustle around arranging family groups like football teams.
Tonight is the last night of the celebrations, and as the children leave the party turns from school fete to rave. Teenagers and twentysomethings are now bounding wildly around to tunes that become increasingly bombastic. Pushing aside the curtain onto the dance floor proper, the noise hits me like a wave as a perspiring DJ plays gangsta rap at top volume and a mass of sweating, pop-eyed lads bound around in Kangol hats and Nike t-shirts.
I spot Hisdori and the gang at the far side of the field, trying to outdo each other in extravagant imitations of Tupac and Puff Daddy. There’s Ali, normally tall, skinny and lugubrious, but tonight waving his spindly arms above his head and grinning insanely. He’s accompanied by Small Brother Of Ali, just as skinny but at 14 not quite as lugubrious or as tall. Iddi, forever Mr Cool, all chin beard and mirror shades, has is own shadow in Small Brother Of Iddi, exuding adolescent attitude also but not quite old enough for the beard.
Seeing me they grab my arms and try to make me dance, but it quickly becomes apparent as I try and fail to match their rhythm that I am the quintessential white person on the dance floor, so I settle for a seat on the sidelines and reflect on the fact that the angry lyrics they’re dancing to could have been written by descendants of the very slaves who once huddled in the caves below the harbour in Zanzibar town, waiting to embark for the New World. No trace of this irony, though, shows on the happy features that are glowing in the light of the hurricane lamps and shouting greetings to passers by without breaking their rhythm.
Just as the music and the dancing reach a sweating fever pitch, the DJ announces a Tarab tune. Tarab is the music of Zanzibar – a wailing vocal over a beat that is curiously Arabic and African at the same time, and traditionally only danced by females. The lads on the dancefloor converge on the hapless man, shouting and waving their fists in outrage whilst still moving compulsively to the beat. The MC is unmoved, breaking into English to emphasise his point. “Ladies only pleeese… LADIES ONLY!” The ladies appear, shyly at first but then with increasing confidence as the beat picks up. A stately conga formation begins to wind its way around the dance floor, the girls’ eyes, covered in picco and rendered drooping and sloe-like by infusions of nutmeg juice, glinting under their demure headscarves. The ladies hold up thousand-shilling notes above their heads as they sway along together, a symbol of their families’ wealth and prestige.
The boys, however, are not to be dismissed that easily. They take to the floor, t-shirts draped over their heads to imitate the girls’ kangas, Rizla packets held aloft in place of money, wiggling their rears and rolling their eyes as their conga picks up a giggling victim and tries to hustle her off the dance floor. Helpless with laughter, I’m rolling around the floor when I feel a little hand tugging at mine and a 12 year old voice whispering “Dance, lady, dance!”. I look up at his face, and recognise Hisdori’s cousin, one of the mini drag queens from the village this morning. Who am I to refuse?
Gemma Pitcher
Sauti za Busara 2009
October 30, 2008
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See 2008 web coverage at these places:
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Music Crossroads – Youth Empowerment Program
August 17, 2008
Music Crossroads International (MCI) is a unique youth music empowerment through music program initiated in 1995 by Jeunesses Musicale International (JMI) and presently encompassing five Southern African countries: Malawi, Mozambique, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
Since the program began 12 years ago as Music Crossroads Southern Africa, MCI has reached almost 30.000 musicians and 600.000 audiences. MCI is comprised of workshops, festivals and competitions to promote the African traditional and contemporary urban music of young African musicians. The project aims at creating sustainable musical structures in the target countries, improving self-awareness and social inclusion of young African individuals. MCI promotes the participation of young women in the program and addresses HIV/AIDS prevention through the Relationship workshops.
Thanks to the generous support from SIDA (Sweden), the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign affairs and UNESCO, MCI has developed into the largest cultural program in Sub-Saharan Africa and the most important youth empowerment program on the African continent.
The Music Crossroads program is divided into 3 fundamental areas:
Musical:
An integral part of the MCI program is the “musical mining”, where national and InterRegional juries identify the stars of tomorrow. As MCI is sifting the best young talents of the five Southern African target countries, we can also assist selected artists and bands to build sustainable musical careers, at home and abroad, by offering musical and performance training, songwriting and arrangement, providing band management and music rights. The MCI Centers also provides rehearsal space, equipment, training and support for local member musicians.
African borders are often difficult to cross due to visa and other regulations. It is also difficult to find opportunities for artists and bands to perform in neighboring countries. Therefore, we are increasingly developing the cross-border exchange of promising MCI acts between the target countries.
Social:
Since 2000, MCI has developed its own dedicated HIV/AIDS prevention program, the “Relationship Workshops” – today mandatory in all festivals, a discussion forum on relations, sex and gender issues, challenging attitudes and offering useful information on how to protect oneself against HIV/AIDS.
But MCI has taken it a step further: as the young MCI musicians are role models for many, the “Songs for Life” program transform since 2004 the learning from the Relationship Workshops into lyrics and music through dedicated songwriter’s workshops, where the best songs are selected and recorded in studio by respective band and then compiled on CD’s and distributed to radio and TV and disseminated to Millions of young people, to ponder the content of these songs with a message.
MCI offers opportunities and hope to young people who otherwise would have little of both. Through numerous workshops, the program gives the individual participants insights, self-awareness and -respect, music, business and social skills, leading to social inclusion and a path to a professional future.
Structural:
MCI recognizes that talent alone is not enough to enable youth to build careers in music – local infrastructure, facilities and human resources must exist to support and nurture growth.
The Music Crossroads International program has over the past 10 years identified and established contacts with key individuals and organizations in the five target countries. As part of the Strategy Program 2006-10, MCI aims at establishing professional, sustainable national structures that should be apt to take on the national management and funding of the MCI program and related activities as from 2011.
The MCI Program promotes organizational setups – staffing, offices and training centers – as well as regional coordination and training of staff and volunteers on relevant issues such as fund-raising, lobbying, PR/Promotion and communication.
The national Music Crossroads entities will engage and train young music organizers and act as an infrastructural resource to develop the national music industries.
Tanzania
Tanzania has 37 million people, in which there are very few Institutions dedicated to the arts. Music Crossroads Tanzania (MCTZ) aims to provide quality training and performances whilst strengthen existing local networks by working with partner organizations in the fields of Music Training, Music Management, HIV /AIDS and Self empowerment.
Music Crossroads was introduced into Tanzania in 1999. Since then it has grown from having four local festivals to nine festivals across the entire country with the goal of establishing two more festivals by end of 2008. Music Crossroads Tanzania is now a recognized non-profit organization, is one of the founding partners of the Youth Leadership Network and stands out as the only countrywide program that offers free music education, training and promotion to the youths of Tanzania.
ARTISTS
An integral part of the MCI Program is the “musical mining”, where National and InterRegional juries identify the stars of tomorrow.
As MCI is sifting the best young talents of the five Southern African target countries, we can also assist selected artists and bands to build sustainable musical careers, at home and abroad, by offering musical and performance training, songwriting and arrangement, providing band management and music rights.
The MCI Centers also provide rehearsal space and equipment for young aspiring artists. Promotion, studio recordings and concert engagements of contracted MCI-winners are pursued on local and national levels, while the InterRegional MCI winners are offered professional training and CD-productions followed by international concert performances and tours on major stages in Europe, North America and Asia. African borders are often difficult to cross due to visa and other regulations.
MCI acts as a bridge between the five African nations and through cross-boarder musical collaborations and exchanges we bring cultures together to celebrate their richness and diversity.
Bi Kidude – As Old as My Tongue
January 22, 2008
By Freddy Macha
I am seated in this hall with roughly, fifty people, watching a film. Beautiful, cosy, intimate, Arcola Theatre is based in the Turkish quarter of Stoke Newington, north London.
For several weeks the Africa Mine Music and Movement festival has been here.
This late Sunday afternoon we are looking at a film from Zanzibar and every now and then you can hear me chuckling in the silence of mostly non-Kiswahili speaking audience.
This is because although the movie is sub-titled, most times the translation misses certain moods that you cannot pick up while reading a foreign language.
In other words I am proud to be observing something from my own culture. This is rare and unique, as I am the only Tanzanian in this space.
The other person that would exchange Kiswahili words with me is Englishman, Andy Jones. It took him three years to make this documentary on Zanzibar`s Taarab singer legend, Bi Kidude.
As Old As My Tongue gives a lesson on East African history, culture, music and the role of Swahili women in society.
In their advert flyer, the Screen-Station producers say Bi Kidude (real name Fatma Baraka) is `probably the oldest singer on the world stage today.`
Old? That is the first point. Old has these days become 35 to 50 years in Africa. Poverty and diseases are killing our people prematurely.
But Bi Kidude tells us she was born poor, her father, a coconut climber (mkwezi) and began singing at the tender age of ten in the 1920�s.
She performed with the legendary musician Siti Binti Saad eulogised by writer Shaaban Robert, fifty years ago. Bi Kidude continues singing Siti Binti Saad`s songs.
Both Shaaban Robert and Siti Binti Saad are, sadly, gone but Kidude, which means a tiny thing, (she explains how the name came about) is still here.
While replying to questions, film director, Andy Jones is asked whether Bi Kidude, was affected by the tough politics that we relate to Zanzibar, including the bloody Revolution of January 1964.
`She sang while Arabs ruled. She sang while the British ruled. And she sang around the times of the Revolution and is still singing amidst today�s conflicts of CUF and CCM.`
This makes her as old as modern Zanzibar. That is why her age is so fascinating. Some cynical islanders claim she is cheating, that she is in her 90`s. Others say 105. Bi Kidude herself declared recently, she is 113.
Whatever the number, one truth lingers. Here is a cherished great grandmother still smoking her cigarettes (even the film`s poster uses this image) drinking beer (and Konyagi, some say), sweeping her house and cooking ugali with fish and spinach (as shown in the film). She is also doing the most significant thing.
Touring around the world including (as witnessed in the documentary) Paris and England�s World Music and Dance festival (WOMAD) in 2004 and 2005, respectively.
The portrayal is just as about her music as her life style.
One of the reasons that artists are said to be mirrors of society is the ability to reflect culture and customs.
Bi Kidude plays drums, sings and leads Ngoma ya Unyago ceremonies in Zanzibar.
We see the Women Only rites of passage dancing. It might appear erotic to the foreigner�s eye but it is something fast disappearing especially in East African cultures.
`During Unyago women are taught sex and how to be with husband. Theory and practise.`
Quips a woman in the film. And technically speaking, the best quality of as old as my tongue is that those in it, including Bi Kidude herself, act, freely tell their stories, playing the role of both narrator and participant.
In most documentaries you have the constant interference of the film-maker.
The good thing about Andy Jones is to let Bi Kidude be her own voice, from beginning to end.
Consequently, this work is almost a good lesson for aspiring cinema makers wanting to cast their egos aside and let life narrate it`s own tale.
Plus a subject that has always bothered me.
Reading many warm reviews my attention is especially drawn to London`s Guardian (Sultans of Swing) in January 2007:
`Zanzibar`s music traditions, are it seems, becoming more popular among foreign fans than the young local people who take their home grown music for granted.`
While over a century old, Bi Kidude is certainly a living legend, a treasure of African music, an example of women of great achievement (winner of the international 2005 WOMEX Award), she seems to be appreciated more by foreigners, as exemplified by the one who just made this movie.
We hear a local Zanzibar producer lamenting how her Taarab music is not played in local radio stations especially on Tanzania mainland.
Despite her icon status, the musician is still treated as a nobody, almost a freak.
Sounds very familiar. Another such legend was the late Hukwe Zawose who (unknown to many in his home) used to be the most recognised international figure from Tanzania second only to Mwalimu Nyerere.
Like Bi. Kidude , Zawose was hardly heard in our radio stations.
His Gogo Ilimba (or Mbira) stuff was described as Tanzania`s classical music by London producer Gabriel Prokofiev.
Gabriel, a remarkable musician, speaks Kiswahili and had stage managed Zawose many times; just like Andy Jones became part of the retinue of Wazungu helping value our own exceptional talents, treasures and stars.
The moral? Let us try and applaud, appreciate Bi Kidude and her music while she is still alive. Documentary will soon be out on DVD.
Source: Guardian
Sauti za Busara 2008
December 30, 2007
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