In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

177 Chapter Seven The Ngoma Impulse: From club to nightclub in Dar es Salaam Werner Graebner When I first stayed in Dar es Salaam in the late 1970s and early 1980s the city’s musical soundscape was dominated by muziki wa dansi, accompanying the day from sunrise to midnight and beyond. Radio Tanzania Dar es Salaam (RTD), the one and only radio station, broadcast Swahili language music, and hence muziki wa dansi almost exclusively. The nation was thus in tune, since in most households the radio was on from 6am until the station closed down at 11pm on weekdays or midnight on weekends. Walking in any neighborhood one could follow the programmes, the sound of radio shifting from one building to the next, only occasionally broken by a cassette recording. I lived in a Swahili-type housing area in Kinondoni. At night, music would spill over from various bars and social halls. Depending on the direction of the wind one might make out Marijani Rajab’s Dar International playing at Kwetu Bar, slightly further away Orchestre Maquis might perform at Lang’ata Social Hall, Vijana Jazz or Juwata could be audible from Vijana Social Hall, across Morocco Road. Walking across Bagamoyo Road, into the almost villagelike surroundings of Mikoroshoni, Remmy Ongala and Super Matimila played the Mkirikiti Bar. On the way back one might catch Issa Matona performing taarab at a private wedding celebration turned public, as performance usually took place in the streets. At the time Dar es Salaam must have had one of the most vibrant music scenes in Africa, with 25 to 30 professional bands performing at the city’s nightclubs. While the bands played their homebase on Saturday night, they otherwise rotated to reach the widest possible audience. Bands performed six nights a week, usually taking Monday off. Advertisements for performances appeared in Uhuru; one page on weekdays, two to three pages for weekend gigs. Most patrons would come to trust their ears, however, and follow the sound once a band had started its routine after about 10 pm. They feared a band might not arrive because of transport problems, or that electricity might fail. Public transport was scarce, particularly at night, and as a result people The Ngoma Impulse: From club to nightclub in Dar es Salaam 178 preferred to just walk round the corner to enjoy an evening out. The halls were usually empty until everything was moving well. A few well-to-do might have entered earlier, making sure that enough beer was available and ordering one or more crates to guarantee they would have a successful night out. If there was a shortage of beer (that also happened), well, then no audience for the band. The muziki wa dansi performance usually began with instrumental versions of perennial favorites like ‘Guantanamera’. They would then move into older Swahili repertoire, either their own hits, or hits of famous 1950s and 1960s bands like Cuban Marimba, or the Morogoro, Dar es Salaam, and Kilwa Jazz Bands as the place slowly filled. Spare musicians circulated around the hall greeting friends or organizing drinks for the hours to come. Only once the full band was on stage to perform more recent songs did the floor fill with dancers. Songs then segued into each other almost without interruption, as musicians who had paused mid-song smoothly took over instruments from their colleagues. And as the night heated up, the songs got longer while the chemko – the fast second part of each song, featuring the tight interplay of three or four guitars plus occasional riffs (and question and answer games) by the horn section – came to a boil. By midnight the band was in full swing, revving in top gear to deliver their best for a good three hours more. Many bands had a team of between twenty and thirty musicians, with maybe fifteen on stage at any one time. Extra members allowed bands to play at least five days a week for up to six hours - an energetic schedule by any standards. Muziki wa dansi’s popularity has been sustained from its emergence in the 1940s up to the present. However, it forms just one of several musical genres that attained popularity in Dar es Salaam in the course of the twentieth century. This chapter provides an account of the most prominent genres up to the 1990s, when economic liberalization and especially the de-regulation of the media had profound effects on the local music scene.1 It...

Share