In an earlier blog entry I mentioned the lack of quality art in Tanzania, but I have to revise that after visiting Sauti za Busara, Zanzibars annual music festival. Very impressive!
It would be too much to mention them all, but let me present some of the names which, at least for me, represented the highlights of the festival:
Bassekou Kouyate &Ngoni Ba
Malian Bassekou Kouyate and his band plays the ngoni, a banjolike instrument with an almost 800 year long history in Mali.
But forget about traditional African music, this guy is rocking HARD! With an attitude like BB King and some very, very groovy riffs this guy is pure energy and he is a true master of the ngoni.
www.myspace.com/bassekoukouyate
www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/worldmusic/a4wm2008/
Black Roots
Was the only band in the program I had heard before, and I had decided that I wanted to hear them again even before I left Dar es Salaam.
Black Roots is from Zanzibar and mix traditional ngoma with African rhythm.
The lead singer is Othman Mohamed, the most famous actor coming from Zanzibar and a very charismatic stage performer.
It’s the kind of music that just makes you in a good mood.
N’Faly Kouaté and Dunyakan
If Bassekou Kouyate is the BB King of the ngoni, then N’Faly Kouaté is the Jimmy Hendrix of the kora – he even plays it behind his back!
N’Faly Ko delivers a very intense onstage performance and the music is exellent.
Modern rhythms inspired by traditional music from Guinea.
www.Dunyakan.com
www.myspace.com/Dunyakan
www.myspace.com/NfalyKouyate
Sakaki Mango
This guy was one of the most curious treats of the festival. Japanese, but fluent in Swahili, and an expert in the limba, a traditional instrument of the Gogo people of Tanzania.
Sakaki is a one man band, playing the percussion with his legs, while singing and playing the limba.
The music is trancelike and soothing – and Sakaki Mango can sing Swahili so it sounds EXACTELY like Japanese.
Yunasi
Yunasi is music for the legs. For the whole body actually. And if you dance well enough, you might be invited to join them on the stage (as it happened to my wife – but she refused).
The band is from Kenya (with the exception of the accordion player who is from France), and they are playing a crossover between traditional East African music, gospel and pop.
National Tarab All Stars
No Sauti Za Busara without tarab music, the traditional music from Zanzibar. Several bands at the festival presented a fusion between Tarab and other kinds of music, but the tarab band I enjoyed the most, was the real thing.
The National Tarab All Stars consists of the top within traditional tarab music from the Islands of Tanzania.
I will not pretend to know anything about tarab (it would be hard anyway), and it is definitely not the kind of music I would go out of my way to purchase. However, lying in the grass in the old fortress of Stonetown on a lazy Saturday afternoon listening to these guys singing and playing their traditional instrumensts was definitely one of the most pleasant moments of the festival.
Seckou Keita Quartet+
Another high octane fusion band starring Seckou Keita, but with an excellent backing band mixing the sound of the kora with violin, electric bass, congas and calabash percussion.
Seckou Keit is from Westafrica but the music is a tour de force of genres and comes out as something you haven’t heard before but recognize anyway because of the many influences from Africa, Europe, the States and Latin America.
I could mention many other names – Malouma, Jaymore, Afrodynamix, Bring the Noise!, Ahmed el Salam, Eric Wainaina & the Mapinduzi Band, Maurice Kirya, all playing really good music – but let me just once again emphasize the high artistic level of the festival. Amazing stuff!
Sauti za Busara means sounds of wisdom.
Jesp
Dear Sir,
Please help me findout the Song, CD & Artist Name for a song I hear on radio. Some of the words in the song are as follows.
"Usifikiri nimekukataa, shaka ondoa nakwambia.
Ubora wa mtu ni tabia"
Thank you
Peter Kamau
Posted by: Peter Kamau | August 07, 2008 at 03:57 PM