The Culture Musical Club (Mila na Utamaduni) was founded in 1958 under the name Shime Kuokoana which translates as 'a call to preserve something which is about to be lost'. In the early 60s the club also used the name of Shime Social Movement. After the Zanzibar revolution in 1964 the club, like all other taarab clubs, came under the umbrella of the culture department of the ruling Afro-Shirazi Party. The name was changed to Culture Music Club and became something like the national taarab group. Members of Culture, Malindi and other groups also often performed together at state functions or for official tours.

At [the height of their popularity], the club has [had as many as] two hundred members, not only in Zanzibar but also in Dar Es Salaam, Mombassa and the Gulf States. Of course not all of the club's members are musicians--there are only about thirty-five active musicians in the orchestra--other members have a supportive membership or are members of the drama group also run by the club.

The musicians in the orchestra are not professional; music and drama [are] vocations they follow in their free time. From this stance they also define the function of their music and, in general, of taarab in society: "Every society depends on work. But workers also need to regenerate. Conversations and relaxing are not enough to refresh the mind or the body. We play music, so the one who has worked all day can rest and forget about the hard work of the day. The same applies to ourselves," explains band member Abass Mwachano Juma. He touts another reason for Culture Music Club and the taarab music tradition is to "preserve the national language, KiSwahili, through music, to preserve our culture."
excerpt of text from liner notes in Taarab 4: The Music of Zanzibar/Culture Music Club
Werner Graebner, 1987 (GlobeStyle Records)