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Welcome to the tropical paradise island of Zanzibar – the ‘Spice Island’ – just off the coast of Tanzania. Monsoon winds have brought seasoned traders from distant lands to do business on the island. They come from as far afield as the Arabian peninsula, India and even China. Bringing spices, porcelain and silk to exchange for ivory, gold or slaves. Arabic is the language of business and Islam is the common cultural bond.
It could be anytime between 1200-1450 AD, when the Indian Ocean was the centre of world trade. The Swahili Coast was a fundamental piece of the puzzle as it is the point where the riches of the African interior meet the ocean trade networks that stretch across the globe. Vast and sophisticated networks don’t just transport goods, they spread ideas, religions, languages, art and culture and people. The city states along the East African coast were melting pots and bustling cultural hubs for many centuries. It’s little surprise then, that Zanzibar was the birthplace of Taarab Music.
The simplest definition of Taarab music is that it’s a blend of pre-Islamic Swahili melodies sung in a rhythmic poetic style mixed with Arabic melodies. But it’s probably more complex than just those two broad influences. In Fact there are traceable elements from Egypt, India, Arabia, the far East and Europe. A Taarab orchestra includes many instruments from various places – Qanun (Egypt), Oud (middle east), Violins, Double Basses and Accordions (Europe) and drums and percussion from the middle east and Africa. They can sometimes also include Indian Tabla and Japanese Taishako. Multicultural to say the least.
So how did it happen? The most common story is that, at the end of the 19th century, the Sultan of Zanzibar (Seyyid Barghash bin Said) was so struck by Music he’d heard in Egypt that he brought a group of Tarab musicians to Zanzibar to play at his court. He later sent one of his own best musicians (Mohammed Ibrahim) to study in Egypt. Mo returned a couple of years later armed with instruments and knowledge, ready to start Zanzibar’s first Taarab orchestra which was aptly called, the Zanzibar Taarab Orchestra. In the early days the Music was intended to be strictly for the upper classes and performed only at the Sultan’s palace, but, a few decades later it was the most popular style of Music all along the Swahili Coast from Mozambique to Somalia.
But let’s back up a second. Didn’t I just tell you that the Sultan of Zanzibar imported Tarab musicians wholesale from Egypt and therefore Taarab must have been a style of Music that already existed? Not quite. Notice the spellings. Taarab = the musical style from the Swahili Coast. Tarab = an Arabic word that describes Music, or, “the ecstatic feeling evoked by true musical artistry”. When the Sultan brought over musicians he was bringing over people who played music from the Arabic tradition and under that large umbrella were playing Egyptian repertoire and instruments. Taarab, the genre that evolved in East African, borrowed instrumentation and musical ideas but became its own thing which was unique to Swahili culture.
Which brings us to our next question. What is Swahili culture? In Arabic ‘swahili’ means, ‘people of the coast’. As we said, the East African coast line was where the worlds of the African interior and the trading forces of the Indian Ocean met. The trading networks stretched far across the oceans but also deep inland as well – to Lake Tanganyika, modern day Eastern DRC, Malawi and Zimbabwe. Swahili, the language, is a Bantu language with Arabic words mixed in. Swahili as a distinctive culture started to develop from medieval times (around the 8th and 9th centuries). However, people had been migrating to the coast and settling for many centuries before that, prospering due to animal husbandry, agriculture and fishing. Hundreds of settlements were established along the coast and these communities continued to trade with people inland. From the 7th century onwards there was contact with sailors and traders coming down the coast from Persia, Arabia and the Red Sea. It has sometimes been assumed that these traders colonized the area and imposed their culture on the settlements there. However, there is much evidence to suggest that the sailors and the local people mixed and intermarried and over time a new culture emerged which was a hybrid of all the various influences. The city states that sprung up along the coast shared culture, religion, architectural style and language. They rarely tried to dominate each other, rather operating as independent states that shared trade and ideas.
Seeing as we keep mentioning culture I think it’s high time we got onto some Music. It definitely seems that Zanzibar is the place where Taarab started before spreading to the rest of the Swahili world. The Sultan of Zanzibar had been to Cairo and was impressed with what he’d seen there – Arab Orchestras, a brand new opera house, musicians filling the cafes and street performers a-plenty. He decided to establish his own orchestra to play for the elite ruling class. But, it seems too simplistic that Taarab was a completely new phenomenon that was established on the whims of the Sultan. Zanzibar was a melting pot of people and ideas for many centuries before this and in its docks there were plenty of active musicians. People from all over Africa and the Middle East singing in Swahili and mixing rhythms and poetry. It’s entirely possible that some of the musicians in the first Taarab Orchestra were from this pool of working class musicians who already had a wealth of musical common ground to work with. They were ready to be trained in new instruments and repertoire. Like language, Music tends to absorb and adapt to new influences as it comes into contact with them. Just like Swahili was once a Bantu language which absorbed Arabic elements over time, there is a distinctly sub-Saharan African component to Taarab Music that goes hand in glove with the Egyptian and Arab influences. The fact that the Sultan was keen to make Taarab the domain of the ruling classes may have been why the Egyptian and orchestral elements may have been emphasised over the folk and working class strands that went into the mix.
However, efforts to keep Taarab solely within the Sultan’s court didn’t work. The genie was out of the bottle and within a couple of decades Taarab was popular all along the Swahili Coast and it was very much a part of the people’s cultural life being performed at weddings and other social events. The Sultan’s orchestra played exclusively Egyptian repertoire but the people’s Taarab soon included Swahili poetry and songs (that pre-dated even the arrival of Islam in the region) and mixed it with Arabic melodies and instruments.
Which brings us to the founder of modern Taarab, Siti Binti Saad, a true pioneer. She was about as far away from the world of the ruling class as was possible to be. Born a slave in Zanzibar c.1880 she moved to the city in 1911 after slavery was abolished. She was soon noticed for her singing abilities and joined the group Nadikhwani at the behest of musician Ali Mushin. Saad brought much to the genre. She popularised singing in Swahili rather than Arabic. Nowadays it is the norm for women to be the lead singers in Taarab groups but she was the first to do it. She was the first East African artist to record a phonograph record, travelling to Mumbai in 1928 to record for HMV recording company. It sold all over the Swahili world and she went on to record a total of 150 records in her lifetime. She remained outspoken about colonial abuses of power and social issues which affected people at the time and she performwd all over the Swahili coast until she died in 1950.
By the 1940’s Mombasa in Kenya was a hotbed of Taarab innovation. Orchestras like Lulu, Juahara and Morning Star used the rich poetry traditions of the Kenyan coast and mixed it with musical ideas from Egypt to India to Latin grooves. Through the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s various strains of Taarab evolved. Arabic Taarab usually featured the Oud as its lead instrument and used Arabic maqam (modes/scales) for its melodies. It was sometimes referred to as ‘men’s Taarab’ as it became popular at stag parties. There had been a wave of Hadrami immigration (people from South East Yemen) to Kenya in the 60’s and there was a lot of inter-marrying between them and the local Swahili population. Taarab musicians were often booked to play at weddings and so a knowledge of Arabic and Swahili repertoire was essential.
Another popular style that emerged after World War 2 was ‘Indian Taarab’. This was extremely popular at women’s wedding celebrations. It was called Indian because it mixed Swahili poetŕy with melodies from Hindi film songs. It remains popular to this day but some of the originators in this style were people like Harmonium player Musa Maaruf, singers Juma Bhalo and Maulidi Juma. Apparently the rivalry between Bhalo and Juma was so intense they used to record insult songs about each other!
Mombasa Taarab started to become popular from the late 60’s and dared to add in Latin music influences whilst also mixing in Chakacha rhythms, another traditional style from the coast. Mombasa Taarab is more danceable than Arab or Indian Taarab. Notable performers include Matano Juma, Zuhura Swaleh and Asha Abdo. The genre had a big hit with Malha’s ‘Vidonge’ in the 90’s that popularised it outside of Kenya. The song’s success had a role in developing the ‘new Taarab’ style in Tanzania.
Modern Taarab today now uses keyboards to replace large ensembles and orchestras. It mixes older Taarab songs with modern pop influences and is much less formal than previous generations. It’s also referred to as ‘Rusha Roho’ which means, “to make your spirit fly”. The lyrics are a lot less subtle than traditional Taarab with metaphors being replaced by direct sexual references. It has caused such fuss that recently the Zanzibari minister for education, sports and culture directly appealed for musicians to tone it down.
One place where Taarab is very much alive today is the Dhow Countries Music Academy in Zanzibar. Here they teach traditional Taarab instruments and Music in order to keep the art form alive both as a way of celebrating Swahili history and culture and as a way of producing professional performers to carry the Music forward.
There are countless substrains and local variations within the genre of Taarab and they will continue to evolve and expand. Where will they go in the internet age now that cultural spread is no longer confined to trade routes on land and sea?
Sources for this article:
Wikipedia – Taarab Music, Swahili Culture
Khan Academy – “Indian Ocean Trade Routes”
bu.ed (Boston University) “The Swahili Coast and Indian Ocean Trade”
africa.si.edu (national museum of national art)
worldhistory.org/swahili_coast
“Shades of Benga – the story of popular music in Kenya: 1946-2016” by Tabu Osusa and Bill Odidi
Musicinafrica.net – “Taarab music: a coastal music with flair”
Rhodes University – “the roots of Zanzibar Taarab” by Hild Kiel
unitedrepublicoftanzania.com