Text by Banning Eyre. Photographs by Banning Eyre and Sean Barlow.

Afropop's Sean Barlow and Banning Eyre spent much of February 2004 in South Africa and Tanzania. In coming months, there will be a series of radio programs, website features, interviews, audio slideshows, and exclusive music offerings in the Afropop Music Shop. To start, we look at the Sauti Za Busara Swahili Festival held in Stonetown, Zanzibar, Tanzania, on February 13-15, 2004. Here's the third of our festival reports. If you enjoy it, check out Sauti Za Busara, 2004:Day 1
and also Sauti Za Busara, 2004: Day 2

Day 3 began with two ngoma groups. Ngoma is traditionally-based Swahili music, dance, and theatre, although as Busara Promotion's DJ Yusuf likes to point out "traditionally based" does not mean strictly traditional. Basengo Arts, a state-sponsored group from the Tanzanian mainland, blended choral singing, hand drumming, and wooden xylophone melodies and put on a varied show that included fantastic dance segments. Imani Ngoma, described by Busara as "one of Zanzibar's hardest-working traditional ngoma groups" presented a more theatre-oriented program that used music and dance more as elements in a village drama, involving a shamanistic figure. The afternoon crowd--almost all locals and including many children--sat transfixed. The set coalesced in vibrant traditional dance directed by a dancer with a whistle. With ankle bells and shimmying shoulders, a front line of male dancers sprung into action driven by rapid, metallic percussion.

From tradition, it was straight into hip hop as a set of local rappers and DJ's took brief turns on the stage as darkness fell. The colorful Halikuniki Comedy Group who so animated the festival opening when they danced with the Police Band, participated. As ever, most of these rappers' acts borrowed heavily from American hip hop conventions. But there were differences, more use of vocal melody and harmony, and fluid dance moves that gave the requisite posing and pointing a different cast. Not speaking Swahili, foreigners like us, of course, miss this music's biggest payoff, which lies in its humor and its social messages. The last of these groups, Off Side Trick, is billed as "Zanzibar's most promising hip hop group," and their set had ragga and R&B elements that got the crowd going.

By night three, the audience had grown accustomed to the evening prayer break. Locals either went to pray or scouted out good viewing positions for the night performances. Foreigners went looking for food or drink, or took a last chance to peruse the virtual market of masks, jewelry and other local arts and crafts that materialized each night.

An eclectic Tanzanian group called Afrikali Band kicked off the night sets. This is a young band whose four members come from southern and eastern Tanzania. Their idea of fusing traditional rhythms, melodies, and dances into an electric pop band context is, of course, a known winner, and the group's two female dancers were excellent. Based on this set, though, they've still got work to do, particularly on polishing the vocals, but it's a solid beginning.

Afrikali's brief set led right into the evening's "Swahili Encounters" segment. Pole Pole Group is a folksy, Tanzanian-Finnish duo that began in Helsinki in 1998. Arnold Chiwalala sang in Swahili in a lithe, reedy tenor and played the 10-string kantele, like a cross between a harp and a dulcimer. Topi Korhonen, a tall Finn, harmonized and accompanied on acoustic guitar. Two additional musicians filled out the lineup on percussion for this pleasant set. As the jangle of acoustic steel strings and the plaintive harmonies of male voices filled the night air, the sea-side grill chefs and sugar cane grinders went into high gear. For the festival's final night, it felt like all of Stonetown had turned out. Women in head scarves and men in Muslim caps and robes mingled with Africans in t-shirts and slacks. The Tanzanian melting pot--still largely un melted--was on full display.

The next act, Saki Stars from Dodoma, proved something of a zinger. This roots pop band started in 1992 when Salome Kiwaya and her husband began making public performances of socially conscious songs, rooted in local traditional music. With only hand drum accompaniment, Salome sang, and soon received widespread encouragement. "People said, 'I like your voice,'" Salome recalls. "It reminded them of singers from West Africa. It had that kind of power, and that spirit." In the way many traditional groups in East Africa get by, Saki Stars soon won the backing of an international organization, in this case, HIVOS, a Dutch outfit working to further emancipation and democracy and to combat poverty in developing countries.

As Saki Stars added more musicians--bass, drums, keyboards, a powerful guitarist well versed in Congolese riffs, and many traditional instruments--the band built a repertoire loaded with topical messages. "Most of my songs are entertainment, and at the same time educational," says Salome. "They are based on social, political, and environmental issues. We always talk about health. For example, we now have this problem of HIV. And right now, today, we are on this ongoing campaign against Female Genital Mutilation." Saki Stars performed two songs on addressing the practice of FMG. One of those, "Tohara kwa Wanawake," uses the distinctively hypnotic music of the Wagogo people--think Hukwe Zawose played on keyboards and electric guitars--to get the word out. "I sing it in Wagogo," says Salome, "and then I just had to put the few words in English, so that everyone will get the message. I say, 'Women of this world, men of this world, why should FMG be done to women?' That's the question I'm putting out there. Of course, it is because of some of these ritual beliefs that people continue doing it. It's now against the law. Anyone caught doing it will be imprisoned or fined, so at least the government is trying. But people are doing it now very secretly, very quietly. So while we can't eliminate FMG 100%, we are working on that, and we are still looking for support, angels or whatever. We go from village to village, but it's difficult." (You can download "Tohara kwa Wanawake" from the Afropop Music Shop.)

There was also a theatrical song protesting the many burdens placed on women. One of the dancers, pillow pregnant, and carrying a bucket and a bundle of wood on her head, came into mock abuse by the others as the song unfolded. The set was a tad keyboard-heavy, but Salome pointed out that the group had left most of their traditional instruments at home because they are too difficult and expensive to travel with, so if you want the full Saki Stars experience, you need to make a trip to Dodoma.

One of the most unusual and soul-satisfying performances in the three-day festival came when 93-year-old Bi Kidude, a Zanzibar institution and the doyenne of the traditional ngoma style known as unyago, took the stage. "Unyago is a tradition I inherited from my grandfather, Baraka," she said when we spoke with her, "Unyago is for a girl, when it's time to be a woman. I learned by myself when I was just a girl. It was one of the ceremonies. I attended and one of those who they were expecting wasn't there. So then I told them, 'Please, I'm going to do it.' This was the beginning. I took the long drum and tied it to myself with a sash. We played the first song, then the second. I participated, and this is how it started. This is what I've been doing ever since."

She strapped on her long drum once again at Sauti Za Busara, and accompanied by two other women drummers, began howling into the microphone in a voice that communicated brash, nonagenarian sexuality, even without translation. When we interviewed Bi Kidude, she sang a lovely taarab song, in Arabic, one she apparently learned by hanging out outside the room where Siti Bint Saad, Zanzibar's pioneering taarab singer, rehearsed. But there was none of taarab's stately elegance in her Sauti Za Busara set. Bi Kidude's suggestive advice to young girls--couched in transparent stories about headless chickens, and chickens having to run from the preying kupanga bird--brought howls of titillated excitement from the crowd.

Throughout the nearly hour-long set, a parade of women danced around the drummers, occasionally stopping to clap, dance, even kneel or lie down to illustrate the song Bi Kidude was singing. The spectacle was unlike anything else, even at a festival filled with one-of-a-kind acts. The force of Bi Kidude's personality far transcended her age. Even if she had been 50, the impact would have been powerful. Still, if in fact she is 93--that's really only an estimate--the energy and spirit is that much more remarkable. "When I sing," she has said, "I feel like a 14-year old girl again." Probably, that's her secret.

Willom Tight and Tight Family of Zimbabwe followed up with a polished set of Zimbabwe pop that was part R&B and part many varieties of southern African pop. Some compared his music to that of Oliver Mtukudzi, and you could hear that in his soul-tinged call-and-response vocal arrangements, but like Tuku's peer Thomas Mapfumo, Tight also used a live mbira in his act, and on two songs, he delved into traditional mbira rhythms. "I come from a family where my mother liked Mukanya (Thomas Mapfumo) and my father liked Tuku," Willom said after his set. "They would always say, 'He is best, He is best, He is best.' Whenever one of them released a new album, my mother would either rush and buy it, or my father would rush and buy it, and then they would play it in the house, showing off to the next one. So I grew up in a house where they could play both Mukanya, Tuku, at the same time other vibes."

Based on his band's clean, professional set, other vibes include reggae, ragga, soul and R&B. The act was a revelation, and another sign that Zimbabwe exudes life force and great music despite really difficult times. In his stage patter, Tight alluded to life under pressure, being penniless in the city, and suffering. He made no direct political statements about Zimbabwe, but he didn't have to. The message was clear.

The festival ended on a an appropriately raucous note with a stem-winder, boogie set from African Revolution Band, one of the top Swahili rumba outfits in Dar es Salaam these days. The story of how guitar-driven Congolese rumba came to East Africa and evolved in various ways is old news now. Cities like Nairobi and Dar have their own parallel histories to the Kinshasa rumba story. African Revolution Band is clearly an evolution beyond Dar's classic musiki was dansi bands, like Mlimani Park Orchestra and Ottu Jazz. At the same time, the band is not quite at the high-tech level of Kinshasa's so called "ndombolo" acts, like Werra Son and J.B. Mpiana. The set was rich with sweet vocal harmonies and sensuous rumba that extended into all kinds of other rhythms before eventually winding up in classic seben, with pumping bass lines, high-flying solo guitar, lots of vocal animation--and dancing. The group's songs, often over ten minutes long, included long sections of dance, featuring a squad of female dancers.

At times, there were over 20 people on stage, and the crowd, now hearing a variety of party music they were entirely familiar with, responded, dancing throughout the Forodhani Gardens site throughout a nearly 2-hour set. When the music ended long after midnight, the stalwarts were still there crowded in before the stage. An air of euphoria lingered for musicians, organizers, press, and public alike. The first Sauti za Busara festival had not only gone off without major hitches--by any measure, it had been a tremendous success. Swahili culture had shone in its great diversity, and Zanzibar had known an unprecedented opportunity to present its musicians to the world. No doubt about it: a new tradition had begun.
















































































Contributed by: Banning Eyre and Sean Barlow