Taarab
Taarab is a popular genre descended from Islamic roots, using instruments from Africa (percussion), Europe (guitar), Arab Middle East (oud and qanun) and East Asia (taishokoto). It is sung poetry and are a constant part of wedding music, and is associated with coastal areas like Lamu and Zanzibar, as well as with neighboring Kenya.
Taarab is often said to have an Egyptian origin, due to the long-term popular of the Ikhwani Safaa Musical Club. While the Egyptian influence is undeniable, coastal East Africa is a cultural melting pot and has absorbed influences from across the Indian Ocean and even further abroad. The first taarab superstar, indeed the first Swahili superstar, was Siti bint Saad. Beginning in 1928, she and her band were the first from the region to make commercial recordings.
Over the next several decades, bands and musicians like Bi Kidude, Culture Musical Club and Al-Watan Musical Club kept taarab at the forefront of the Tanzanian scene, and made inroads across the world. Kidumbak ensembles grew popular, at least among the poor of Zanzibar, featuring two small drums, bass, violins and dancers using claves and maracas. More recently, modern taarab bands like East African Melody have emerged, as has related backbiting songs for women called mipasho.
The 1960s saw a group called the Black Star Musical Club, from Tanga, modernize the genre and brought it to audiences far afield, especially Burundi and Kenya.
Taarab music is a fusion of pre-Islamic Swahili tunes sung in rhythmic poetic style spiced with general Islamic melodies. It is an extremely lively art form springing from a classical culture, still immensely popular with women, drawing all the time from old and new sources. Taarab forms a major part of the social life of the Swahili people along the coastal areas; especially Zanzibar, Tanga and even further in Mombasa and Malindi along the Kenya coast. Wherever the Swahili speaking people travelled, Tarabu culture moved with them. It has penetrated to as far as Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi in the interior of East Africa where taarab groups compete in popularity with other western-music inspired groups.
Tanzania was influenced heavily after the 1960s with the influence of African and Latin music. Tanzanian soldiers brought back with them the music of these cultures, as well as Cuban and European music, when returning from World War II. These musical influences fused and brought together the Tanzanian people. Eventually the country and its people created its own style of music. This style, called "Swahili Jazz" was a mix of beats and styles of Cuban, European, Latin and African music. Swahili jazz gave Tanzania a sense of independence and togetherness as a country.
These days a taarab revolution is taking place and much heated debate continues about the music which has been changed drastically by the East African Melody phenomenon. Melody, as they are affectionately known by their mostly female fans, play modern taarab, which, for the first time, is 'taarab to dance to' and features direct lyrics, bypassing the unwritten laws of lyrical subtlety of the older groups such as Egyptian Musical Club and Al-Wattan Musical Club where meaning to their songs was only alluded to, and never directly inferred. Today, taarab songs are explicit - sometimes even graphic - in sexual connotation, and much of the music of groups like Melody and Muungano is composed and played on keyboards, increasing portability, hence the group is much smaller in number than 'real taarab' orchestras and therefore more readily available to tour and play shows throughout the region and beyond.
Read more about this topic: Music Of Tanzania