History will be in the making from
28th April to 3rd May 2015 as the Taarab-Kidumbak Ensemble from the Dhow
Countries Music Academy travels to Harare to perform for Zimbabwean and
international audiences.
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While taarab music has been
successfully performed in India already from 1928 with recording performances
by the famous singer Siti Bint Saad, numerous performances in Europe by Bi
Kidude and instrumentalist Mohamed Issa Matona and other performers, this will
be the first time taarab will make its way into the interior of Africa as far
south-west as Zimbabwe.
Intra-African streams of music
influence have had significant influence on the spreading of music traditions
within Africa. Examples of this are the spread of musical bow traditions that
traveled with the Ngoni migration over one hundred years ago bringing these
traditions from the South African coast to northern Malawi and southern
Tanzania; yodel-singing traditions of the short-statured people of the Congo
spreading southward through sections of Central Africa all the way to the Cape;
and even within Tanzania with Massai song traditions greatly influencing Wagogo
vocal music.
While these north-south musical
migrations took place many years ago, there have been little similar east-west
musical migrations. This is why the historical concert tour by the
Taarab-Kidumbaki Ensemble of the Dhow Countries Music Academy of Zanzibar,
taking place from the 28th of April to the 3rd of May) is so significant.
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While Zanzibar music has been
greatly affected by the music of the Portuguese from the 1500s to the 1700s,
the Arab traditions from the 1700s to the 1900s and the European/American
traditions (German and British and the United States) since 1900, the music of
Zanzibar had little opportunity to influence other music traditions. Exceptions
to this are the music traditions of the Comoro Islands in the southern Indian
Ocean that has been greatly influenced by Zanzibar taarab and other Zanzibar
music traditions..and some early Indian/Persian music traditions from Zanzibar
that spread in northerly directions into Uganda.
Alexander MacKay (1848-1890),
missionary living many years in Uganda, in 1879 suggested that the drums and
bugles he saw and heard in Buganda came from Zanzibar and other locations along
the coast to the land of the Buganda. Wachsmann (1971) also said that the
Buganda Chief Muteesa (chief from 1856 to 1884), ".employed a
knowledgeable retainer, who had once been in the service of the Sultan of
Zanzibar to train young men in the music of the drum".
NOW, the taarab music of Zanzibar,
greatly influenced by the café music of Egypt 150 years ago, will be brought to
Zimbabwe for performances at the well known Harare International Festival of
the Arts (HIFA). To the best of our knowledge, this will be the first time the
taarab and the kidumbak traditions of Zanzibar are performed this far west of
the East African coastline. The 10 musicians from the Dhow Countries Music
Academy will make this historic safari and will offer 4 performances in Harare,
i.e., 2 major performances, a street performance in the middle of Harare and a
school workshop in taarab drumming, dance and song.
This historic tour will be well
documented and it is the wish of the Dhow Countries Music Academy that this
tour will enable more people from Zimbabwe and elsewhere to learn more about
the music-making, music training at the Dhow Countries Music Academy and the
greatness of the taarab-kidumbak traditions of Zanzibar.
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