Karibu! Welcome to Zanzibar, a small archipelago lying just below the equator in the Indian Ocean, a few dozen kilometers by ferry from Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania’s economic capital. Turquoise lagoons, white sand, giant tortoises, grilled fish, the scent of perfume in the evening air, flamboyant trees, and coconuts… These are the clichés that tour operators love to display in their brochures, conjuring up fantasies of a sensual, unspoiled island paradise, while concealing the highly unstable reality oft found in the post-colonial wake. Another, “must-do” guidebooks would do well to offer for this paradisiac décor: a taarab concert on the starlit rooftop of a Persian-style hotel, tracing moonlight across the Oriental night.
“Listening to a good taarab orchestra in Zanzibar is like gliding across the Indian Ocean on board a fisherman’s dhow driven by monsoon winds into the setting sun… It’s ecstasy, a sensation unlike any other,” breathes Yusuf Mahmoud, founder of the renowned Sauti Za Busara festival(The Sounds of Wisdom), which has been actively promoting Zanzibar’s taarab scene since the event’s creation in 2003. This year’s program features singer Siti Amina, who describes the music in even greater depth: “Taarab has a spiritual dimension for me. Carried along by its melodic sophistication, its poetry. I fly above everything. When I sing, I feel like I’m in paradise!”
Derived from the Arabic word tariba – “to be touched with ecstasy in the face of beauty” – according to ethnomusicologist Gilbert Rouget in La Musique et la Transe – taarab is THE traditional music of Zanzibar. There are other endemic sounds, such as ngoma, kidumbak, béni and msondo, but of all of them, taarab is the best known, extending from Egypt to Mayotte, along the entire Swahili coast of the Indian Ocean. Just like the Zanzibari archipelago, taarab is a veritable migratory, commercial and cultural crossroad, influenced by centuries by Arab sultans, Portuguese conquerors, slave traders, Indian merchants, British colonists, continental vitality and international tourism. Its noble, complex orchestrations traditionally feature instruments as diverse as the oud, qanûn, violin, double bass, accordion, tablas, riqq, daf and local percussion. In essence, taarab is syncretic and composite.
In Zanzibar, taarab remains an institution, thanks to great names that have nurtured its reputation far beyond East Africa, passionate music diggers, and a tourism policy that maintains its myth. But what’s that that threatens Zanzibari taarab on the other side of the postcard? For behind the myth, there’s a story, and between its lines, the life of a music where political and social issues intersect today. The survival of a culture and an identity are at stake, but also a potent weapon for women, who play a key role within taarab, and who have used the genre for emancipation and political caché. Their voices still resonate across the archipelago and in the consciousness of the younger generation, who seem to swear by urban music alone.
Taarab to the Grammys
In the shade of the Forodhani Garden’s tall acacia trees, Brain Boy is nowhere to be found. With just a few days to go before his first concert on the Sauti Za Busara festival stage, a sought after springboard for local artists, the latest convert to the “zenji flavor” style, is feeling the pressure. If Brain Boy isn’t here this morning, it’s because he’s still in the studio rehearsing with his band. So it’s off to Stone Town Records, his label, his HQ, his “second home”.
To get there, you must first overcome the maze of alleys in the mythical stone city, the historic quarter of Zanzibar City, a Unesco-listed architectural treasure; “a medina on Swahili soil, Arab palaces in the tropics, a glimmer of India in Africa”, writes Jean-Blaise Besençon in Zanzibar (ed. Favre, 2005). A slalom begins between a pack of white-collared tourists and swarms of souvenir stalls with pearls and spices that pile up in the sun on barazas, the concrete benches that line the stalls. Noon! indicate the bells of the Anglican Cathedral, built in place of a haunting slave market, demolished after the abolition of the slave trade in Zanzibar in 1873. Allâhou Akbar! answer the muezzins from the top of their minarets. It’s a hot day. Kiponda Street. There it is, on the left. Iron door, staircase, studio A, studio B.
Keyboard, bass, drums, oud, violin and qanûn shake the tagged walls of this small apartment transformed into a Mecca for zenji flavor, a hip-hop movement born in the 90s in Zanzibar that samples taarab abundantly in a creative gesture of identity – like that of American hip-hop when it borrows its most beautiful gimmicks from great Black music. Pioneers such as Kolpara, Ali Haji and DJ Saleh paved the way for others to follow, notably Zenji Boy, the first artist signed to Stone Town Records, who has since organized regular street competitions to unearth future talent, with the best MC offered a chance to join the label. When Brain Boy appears, it’s in flip-flops, wearing an official jersey of the archipelago’s soccer team, and with his name on it.
“My dream is to see taarab win a Grammy Award!” smiles Hamid Sabur Soud, aka Brain Boy who, at 28, has already won a Zanzibar Youth Award for The Return of Zenji Flavour, a debut EP released in 2022. Brain Boy inherited taarab from his mother, a music lover who gave him his first qanûn tunes. In any case, it’s hard to escape it: weddings, elections, radio or television, taarab is the guest of honour at all major occasions. “Taarab is Zanzibar’s natural music, its true flavor,” says Brain Boy. “Here in Tanzania, in Africa, young people swear by r&b, singeli and afrobeats. I don’t disagree: taarab is our traditional music, our identity, I was born here: so to play zenji flava today is to tell the world who I am. But to be able to sing in the style of the great taarab masters, like the late Makamé Faki, my favorite, I had to work a lot, and for that I took courses at the Dhow Countries Music Academy with Siti Amina. Because when I started out, people laughed at me, saying that I sang badly and that my voice was ugly. But the secret of taarab is the voice – it’s the voice that gives you all those emotions.” As if to testify to his progress, Brain Boy begins to sing.
Today, Brain Boy performs regularly in Zanzibar, and sometimes at official events at the request of the local government. “It’s interesting because it allows me to meet people, play in the public space and, sometimes, make a bit of money. It’s a win-win situation: I support the government, which supports me in return,” explains the singer, who is not the only one, or the first to seize, willingly or unwillingly, the outstretched hand of the political world. Though intimately linked to the archipelago’s history, what role will taarab have to play in the future of the local scene?
Between poetics and politics
Under Arab and then British domination, Zanzibar proclaimed its independence on December 10, 1963. A revolution came the following year, supported in music by the Culture Musical Club, a now-legendary taarab ensemble which, while still young at the time, saw in Amani Karume’s revolutionary Afro Shirazi party the hope of a better tomorrow… This dream was shattered by two long decades of dark dictatorship – “absolute horror”, as author Adam Shafi Adam recounts in Haini, le traître, in the chapter on Zanzibar’s prisons – and local governance confiscated by the Tanzanian state in favor of the Tanganyika African National Union, whose praises would be sung by other taarab voices. From the mid-80s onwards, Zanzibar witnessed the return of a semblance of democracy, and taarab continued to accompany “the island’s mutations and upheavals”, to quote geographer Nathalie Bernardie-Tahir in L’Autre Zanzibar, géographie d’une contre-insularité (ed. Karthala, 2007).
Since, with rigged local elections and systematic repression of opposition voices, the archipelago is still struggling to (re)discover political stability and the confidence of its population. So, to facilitate mediation, the political sphere calls on high-profile artists, particularly during election periods. In 2020, for example, President Hussein Ali Mwinyi invited Brain Boy to perform with his band during his campaign to attract the votes of Zanzibar’s youth. “Just recently, we played at the inauguration of Stone Town’s new hospital,” adds Brain Boy.
“It’s cool and I’m playing along, because my president is doing good things for Zanzibar. But I have to admit that I’m also extremely cautious. Firstly, because people here are disgusted with politics, and I don’t like it either. Too much competition, too many disappointments. And then if your fans see you supporting the ‘wrong’ party, they’re quick to drop you when the wind changes or think you’re an opportunist; a politician rather than a good musician.” So Brain Boy sings of love, the poetic backbone of traditional taarab, whose lugha ya majazi (pictorial language) also makes it possible to encrypt social or political criticism. Next year, Brain Boy will release a debut album in which he says he wants to go beyond the romantic question to talk about his country’s “problems”. In particular, the “beach boys”, young men who “instead of believing in themselves” roam the archipelago’s beaches selling odds and ends, excursions and, more often than not, love to young Western tourists – who, once under their spell, are convinced to help them improve their lifestyle or start a business. Brain Boy also has a flair for business. Before going to take some photos, the singer opens Cubase on the studio computer: a preview of his next hit… Afrobeats. Ouch! The temptation… But everyone gives in to it, even the tuk-tuks in Stone Town, which play the latest Afro-pop hits over and over on speakers damaged by the bumps in the road.
Conqueror and athlete, Brain Boy has his sights set far beyond Sauti Za Busara and to the Zanzibar International Music Awards, a competition organized by Emerson’s Zanzibar Foundation, the philanthropic arm of a hotel chain with two establishments and several restaurants in Stone Town alone.
The DHOW must go on
“If you go and listen to taarab in a hotel in Zanzibar, you can ask any musician where he studied, and he’ll tell you: at the DCMA,” says Halda Alkanaan, proudly, the director of the archipelago’s only music school. Just a few minutes walk from the bustling heart of Stone Town, the Dhow Countries Music Academy promises a haven of peace, protected from the traffic of Vuga Road by a crowd of bird-studded tamarind trees. It’s quiet. Skinny cats satiate under the wheels of battered scooters. Through the ever-open windows and doors of the old white building drift violin melodies and the dissonant chorus of tuned instruments. At the entrance, you have to sign the visitors’ registrar, and tonight there will be plenty attending the concert by the Culture Musical Club, a historic pillar of taarab founded in the late 50s and programmed every year to open the Sauti Za Busara festival.
At the moment, clusters of students are practicing their instruments in the corridors before their next lesson, like 25-year-old Frank, who is working on his scales on the violin. Frank is Tanzanian, from the mainland, and like him, many students come from far and wide to study at the DCMA. Founded in 2001, the school is actually an NGO funded mainly by patrons such as the French and German Embassies in Tanzania, the Rotary Club of Zanzibar and two local telecom companies. Halda Alkanaan is the first Zanzibar native to head the DCMA. Before her, it was foreigners, mainly Europeans, who held the post. “At the moment, we have thirty students, the youngest is seven years old and most of them depend on scholarships. But we have to fight to continue to exist, because we’re suffering serious financial difficulties,” she laments, brow furrowed in concern. “The government doesn’t support us. Yet the academy has a huge impact here in Zanzibar and beyond. We’re the only ones working to preserve, transmit and promote the region’s traditional music… Béni, ngoma, kidumbak, taarab: you can learn it all here! We’re also the only ones working on the notation of the taarab repertoire on sheet music: thanks to us, any musician who can read a score can play taarab. Not to mention the number of young people who manage to earn a living from music.” With a youth unemployment rate of over 13% in Tanzania and 17% in Zanzibar (ILO figures, 2014), DCMA has its work cut out, and motivates its students with this mantra displayed in every classroom: “music for education, music for employment, music for joy”.
Day to day, Halda Alkanaan counts on a small team of passionate teachers, most of whom were originally students at the DCMA. Such is the case of Tryphon Evarist, a thirty-something with a sideways bowler hat who now teaches accordion, music theory, as well as the rudiments of qanûn and clarinet. Some months he and his colleagues go without pay, but it takes more than that to discourage this hyperactive pedagogue from his priestly duties. “The biggest challenge facing taarab over the next few years is the lack of new composers,” says the musician, who has just released “Nitakuoa (I’ll marry you)”, a Swahili song composed according to the canons of traditional taarab. “If no one renews their repertoire, taarab will become impoverished and sclerotic. Without the DCMA, taarab would be in mortal danger, but as long as it’s here, I nourish the hope that it will create the composers of tomorrow.” As for those of yesteryear, their story is told on the walls of the school, which takes care to maintain the memory of taarab.
Taarab was introduced to Zanzibar by the Omani people, who ruled the archipelago until the end of the 19th century. During that time, Sultan Sayyid Barghach was known for indulging in luxury and pleasure, finding much joy in entertainment, and inviting Egyptian musicians to his palace on the waterfront near the Old Fort. Never quite satiated by taarab’s refined, learned melismas, the sultan sent one of his men, Mohammed Ibrahim, to study in Cairo, where he perfected the art of violin and percussion. Upon his return, a small group was formed, and from then on, the happy few flocked to the sultan’s court to listen to the love imbued melodies of taarab, which, at the time, was sung and taught exclusively in Arabic and between men, thus remaining inaccessible to the common local population. With the end of the Omani sultanate in Zanzibar in 1890 and the establishment of the British protectorate, things changed. Taarab left the palace salons for the more popular ones of the city, where the first Zanzibari taarab group, the Ikhwani Safaa Musical Club, which still exists today, began performing in 1905. But the great taarab revolution in Zanzibar was written by women and its rebellious pioneer Siti Binti Saad. “Siti Binti Saad changed the course of history, and her contribution to taarab is enormous,” recalls Professor Tryphon, pointing to a blue ink portrait of ‘the mother of taarab’ that watches over the school’s small courtyard.
The mother of taarab
An absolute icon for having been the first to dare transgress the ban on women singing taarab, Siti Binti Saad was also the first artist of the genre to record her repertoire, in Bombay, India, in 1928, in the studios of the British Gramophone Company – at the express request of the record company. Very popular in East Africa, where she was already touring with an orchestra, Siti Binti Saad recorded nearly two hundred titles in just a few months: sales were quick, and even the Egyptian diva Oum Kalthoum made the trip to Bombay to meet her! Though this success was never a guarantee for Siti Binti Saad, born Mtumwa, or “the servant girl”, to parents who were slaves on the spice plantations in the village of Fumba in 1880. But the young woman refused to accept her fate as a slave and adopted the particle “siti”, making her a lady. Thanks to her voice and her free spirit, by 1920 the singer was inviting herself to the fine soirées of the Zanzibari elite in Stone Town. Driven by a desire for emancipation from colonial domination, including musical domination, it was here that she gradually initiated the Africanization of taarab, singing in Swahili and incorporating local rhythms on the percussion. In short, she anchored the genre.
In her songs, Siti Binti Saad uses poetry braided with realism, humor and improvisation to criticize the British presence, the corruption of institutions, the living conditions of workers and the lack of access to education for women. And when she sings about love and daily life, Siti Binti Saad also denounces the abuses of patriarchy, going so far as to mock men’s performance under the sheets. “Taarab still has a critical function in Zanzibar today, acting as a kind of social regulator,” explains Professor Tryphon. “In song, taarab can be used to settle scores with a neighbor, make a declaration of love or depict the difficulties of daily life while respecting the framework of social conventions. It helps to pacify the bonds in a community by defusing things with humor. Nevertheless, the poetic language of taarab is becoming poorer: as a result, criticism is less well formulated, and less constructive than before.”
Siti Binti Saad was critical to the point of anger towards colonial injustice in “Kijiti”, a song from the 1920s that recounts the release of the rapist and murderer of a young girl in Zanzibar – while those who denounced his crime were imprisoned. A feminist and anti-colonialist, the taarab matriarch passed on her repertoire and rebellious spirit to her protégée Bi Kidudé, who was to follow in her footsteps. When she passed away in 1950, Siti Binti Saad left a light burning for those to follow. “More and more girls are coming to study music with us – nine this year,” enthuses Halda Alkanaan. Among them is Thureiya, 24, chewing gum, wearing jeans, heels, hijab and sunglasses. At the DCMA, this young woman is studying taarab singing against the wishes of her family. “It’s hard to make music and build yourself as an artist when your relatives judge that for a woman, it’s not acceptable, not moral,” she laments. “But women like Siti Binti Saad and Bi Kidude have proved that taarab is a powerful vector of emancipation, and I love it too much! So I’m moving forward as a conqueror and I’m always working harder, because the magic of the taarab is that it accepts all voices.”
Polé polé: slowly but surely
“Zanzibari society was built on immigration, so cross-fertilization and hybridity are pillars of our identity,” posits Siti Amina, the day after her live performance on the main stage of the Sauti Za Busara festival, which each year invites its privileged audience to celebrate the diversity of African music with original fusions and unifying headliners. On the program for this 21st edition: Zoë Modiga, Madé Kuti, the spiritual jazz of the South African collective The Brother Moves On, the James Brown-style harangues of Ugandan harpist Aliddeki Brian, the ethereal r&b of Reunion’s Sibu Manaï, the East-West duo Afropentatonism between Ethiopian scales and desert blues, the star of Tanzanian singeli Sholo Mwamba and the Maasai reggae of Warriors From The East.
Siti is seated at the Hifadhi Zanzibar Majestic Theatre, just a stone’s throw from the Old Fort, where most of the concerts take place and where the decor allows it to float out of time. On its patio, lined with elaborate mosaics, the temple’s janitor plays an Arabo-Andalusian maqam classic on the violin, while outside, women fry mandazi, cardamom fritters, under the branches of an old orange tree cradled by a sea breeze. “Hifadhi means preserve in Swahili,” explains Siti Amina, adjusting the white scarf that frames her face. “I chose this place because it’s one of the last live music spots in Stone Town and one of the few historic buildings in the town not yet to have been turned into a hotel since the archipelago became a tourist destination in the late 80s. I love coming here, it’s peaceful, I feel good here.” Hifadhi is an oasis away from the hustle and bustle and the many demands on her time as president of the Live Music in Zanzibar association, a member of the Central Art Federation of Zanzibar, an ambassador for tourism, and an advocate for women’s rights with various associations. She is also a singing teacher, and leader of the group Siti & The Band, formed at the end of her studies at DCMA in 2015.
On Fusing The Roots, her debut album released in 2018, Siti & The Band present eight tracks of taarab with traditional foundations, enriched by bursts of jazz, funk or reggae grooves, in a gesture of renovation through fusion of a genre which “if it’s alive, must necessarily evolve”, says Siti. “In Zanzibar, we depend on tourism today and it’s complex for artists who play taarab. Tourists want to be entertained and have fun with danceable rhythms, but at the same time they’re looking for authenticity, a form of traditional purity – fantasized of course. In hotels, musicians are sometimes obliged to play taarab-style covers to satisfy guests, Céline Dion or whatever! With Siti & The Band, we try to strike a balance, to find the right mix to exist in the present without compromising our heritage. In the same way that Bi Kidude covered Siti Binti Saad’s songs in her time, we cover Bi Kidude’s songs to propel them towards a new tomorrow.” Oh venerable Bi Kidude, “the little thing” in Swahili, who since her death in 2013, at over one hundred and two years of age, remains the archipelago’s best-known voice.
Fleeing poverty and a forced marriage, Bi Kidude met Siti Binti Saad as a teenager, who took her under her wing and passed on her knowledge of taarab. In turn, Bi Kidude broke new ground, swapping her elder sister’s hijab for cigarettes, which she puffed on stage between rounds of singing. An inveterate gossip with a crude sense of humor and a husky voice, Bi Kidude asserted her taste for Konyaki (local gin), parties and freedom – legend has it that one of her first rebellions was running away from Koranic school at the age of ten. And while the musician knew how to look after herself, she also looked after others: a healer specializing in plants, Bi Kidude was much in demand for her mastery of msondo, a ritual initiation song for young girls whose ceremony and unyago dances mark the passage into adulthood.
After her debut alongside Siti Binti Saad, whose repertoire she extended and expanded, Bi Kidude toured the world with various orchestras, the Culture Musical Club and the Twinkling Stars, who accompanied her in an anthology concert at the Théâtre de la Ville in Paris in October 1990. The taarab queen’s international reputation is such that she attracts many people to the archipelago, including Andy Jones who, in 2006, dedicated the documentary As Old As My Tongue: The Myth and Life of Bi Kidude to her. In Ng’ambo, where she lived in a cinderblock hut, the British documentarian filmed a lady as wrinkled as an old apple coming alive with the energy of a lioness when she sings.
Like Siti Binti Saad and Bi Kidude before her, Siti Amina deserted marriage and domestic violence to devote herself to music. And, like them, Siti Amina sings about women “because we have to tell the truth, it’s silence that kills us”. With these words, she picks up her oud and begins to play, once the call of salat asr, the afternoon prayer, has passed, spreading its celestial tones across the walls of Hifadhi. For three minutes, the venue’s acoustics sublimate her naked rendition of “Uchungu wa mwana”, a song by Siti Binti Saad about the gigantic challenge of motherhood, reworked, almost a century later, in an uptempo version by Siti & The Band featuring G Nako, an afrobeats star followed by millions of young Tanzanians.
“Siti Binti Saad and Bi Kidude are obviously great inspirations for me. Like them, I had to fight to be free and for society to accept me as a musician. That’s why I started teaching: music changed my life, it freed me, so now it’s my turn to pass it on. In any case, there are too few professional female musicians in Zanzibar. In my small way, I’m trying to remedy this, by encouraging as many women as possible to take the plunge.
It’s great that taarab still exists in a society like ours, and for women here, it offers an unparalleled space for expression. Because these days, most singers are women. Traditionally, in taarab concerts, the women sit at the back, hidden behind the musicians, and when it’s time, they get up and go to the front to sing. This is a real opportunity for the women of Zanzibar; they can take over the space and express themselves out loud, and that’s great. But today, the DCMA is also training more and more women to play taarab instruments. This allows them to take center stage for an entire concert and demonstrate their virtuosity on the oud, qanûn, violin and percussion.
Slowly but surely, there are more and more female instrumentalists, and that’s great. However, the majority of arrangers, composers and lyricists are still men, so I hope that in the future, taarab will be able to count on a new guard of female composers.”
The baggy pants theory
Time’s up! Siti Amina stows her oud in its case, grabs a large basket which she throws over her shoulder and strides through the imposing carved doors of the old building. She has an appointment with singer Siân Pottok, who also plays the kamele n’goni: the two musicians are currently working on an original repertoire for the next edition of the French festival Africolor.
Because there’s strength in numbers, other sisters in Zanzibar aren’t waiting to take destiny into their own hands, notably by creating all-female taarab ensembles. In 2020, violinist and composer Rahmah Ameyr brought together eleven women to found the Uwaridi Female Band in the footsteps of the Tausi Women’s Taarab, sixteen musicians who had the honor of accompanying Bi Kidude during her lifetime. Following in her footsteps, their leader Maryam Hamdani writes critical texts denouncing the puritanism of imams and, since its formation in 2009, has led the band to perform in the archipelago’s isolated villages to raise awareness of feminist struggles among young girls. Among the soloists, singer Siti Muharam brilliantly reactivates the pioneering legacy of Siti Binti Saad, her great-grandmother, going so far as to win a Songlines Award in 2020 for her debut album, Siti of Unguja (Romance Revolution On Zanzibar). Known in Zanzibar as “the DJ with the hijab”, Aisha Bakary is also doing her part to explore the trance-inducing potential of the great taarab voices, remixing classics on her turntables since 2016. Carried by an army of female warriors, at the heart of the Zanzibari identity, island taarab seems to have a bright future ahead of it.
Before leaving the archipelago, it’s time for a final stop at the Dhow Countries Music Academy, which hosts an afternoon vocal workshop led by German mezzo-soprano Anne Buter. For the future of taarab, those within its circle must work as hard as they can, while they still can. In desperation, the school has just launched an online fund-raising campaign to collect donations to ensure its future in the absence of support from both the local government and the Tanzanian state – currently headed by Zanzibari Samia Suluhu Hassan, president since the death of John Magufuli in 2021. “In Zanzibar, as in the rest of Africa, politicians use us every day to serve their interests, polish their image and liven up their political events; they can’t do anything without artists. So why don’t they invest more in music?” asks Siti Amina, answering her rhetorical question without interruption. “I think those who govern us know the power of music and art. When it comes to awakening consciences, they are very powerful weapons, and that scares them. And then, if taarab is in danger, it’s also because, in the end, tourists seem to be more attached to it than the locals who only think, even if it means getting lost, of copying the rest of the world.”
Faced with the Afrobeats wave and a singeli scene so dynamic in Tanzania that, in early February, several thousand people gathered in Dar es Salaam for the ambitious Singeli 2 The World international convention, will the ancestral lyricism of taarab withstand the competition in the hearts of Zanzibar’s youth? For Thureiya, hakuna matata, all will be well. “In my opinion, it’s only a matter of time before young people come back to taarab,” prophesied the apprentice singer. “Certainly, for the time being, people of my generation prefer to listen to Diamond Platnumz, and few of them know who Siti Binti Saad is. But fashions are cyclical – even baggy pants are back in fashion! So who knows?”
Yes, who knows? Maybe in time, the same people who listen to singeli non-stop will realize that they’re sampling taarab and come back full circle. Maybe the DCMA will be saved. Maybe the local government will eventually declare that taarab is as valuable as tanzanite, even if it pays less. Maybe Brain Boy will go to the Grammys and Siti Amina to the UN. Who knows? Time will tell… For now, it’s time to leave, and a last glance towards Stone Town catches the eye like an oracle with a phrase from the façade of the Freddie Mercury Museum. The show must go on!
