Here is a sampling of the music contained in the archives.

Wagogo Tribal Music

This recording was made in the field by Tanzanian ethnomusicologists using portable mikes. You 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. But, per Bruno, this is the most influential tribe.

Kiko Kids – Mambo Rumba

Meanwhile, you had the 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. The above recording is from 1963, and is basically indistinguishable from what you might hear in a pre-Castro Havana nightclub, except they’re singing 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.

Atomic Jazz – Hafidha

Soon bands were combining the rhumba base with the traditional polyrhythmic sounds, with two or three wandering guitars and complex vocal harmonizing. John Kitime, of Kilimanjaro Band, tells us that this is a love song and a true story. The woman it is about, Hafidha, passed away just last year.

Kilwa Jazz – unkown

Ahmed Kipande was the saxophonist and band leader of Kilwa Jazz. This track is a cover song from South Africa in the Jive style.

It wasn’t just guitar and drums either. Top bands began expanding, with horn sections, multiple percussionists and backup vocalists, luxuries which were previously unaffordable. I really like the horn/guitar counterpart on this one, although the beat is still strictly Cuban. The Afro 70 Band selection from the beginning is also from this period.

Western Jazz – Title Unknown

Musicians in search of an “authentic Tanzanian” sound began to experiment beyond the boundaries of the rhumba. They were stealing borrowing a significant amount from their neighboring Congolese rivals, of course, but there was a distinct flavor to the sound. Particularly this song, which 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.

Mlimani Park Orchestra – Barua Toka Kwa Mama (intro)

The ranks of the groups started expanding. What might’ve once been a three-piece trio expanded into a fourteen-piece “orchestra.” Qualified musicians were paid a monthly government salary, which meant fierce competition from itinerant tradesman used to gigging. The most famously bloated of these was Mlimani Park Orchestra, founded in the suburbs of Dar in 1978. Muhiddin Maalin, who had previously headed NUTA, was the George Clinton to this Parliament. The above track is their very finest, with a sunny upbeat melody and a great electric organ theme over a swing-influenced guitar line.

The song is over seven minutes long, and it doesn’t really get going ’til about the three-minute mark when the horns kick in. Then at the four-minute mark comes the instrumental break. It’s maybe the highlight of the entire command-economy musical experiment. No lie, it’s the jam: if you only bother to press play on one of these tracks, make it this one.

-Stephen Witt, March 2010

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