Tanzania Yetu

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  Sonic World Wonders Part 3

  Pieter

  Hukwe Zawose & The Bagamoyo Players. "Born in Doduma, in central Tanzania, Zawose studied music with his father, learning a variety of traditional instruments, including the iseze, a stringed instrument, and the marimba, or its diminutive relative, the chirimba (the Tanzanian metal-tongued instrument plucked with the thumbs). He was also a vocalist of exceptional sensitivity, with a voice that swept from a natural speaking range to a throaty falsetto.

  Under the socialist-inspired government of President Julius Nyerere, Tanzanian culture flourished, although there was little money available for recording. Zawose first made his name in Tanzania with the Bagamoyo College of Arts, a pan-Tanzanian cultural troupe, and the Tanzanian National Dance Troupe. In 1984, he came to London as part of the Commonwealth Institute's Africa, Africa programme.

  One member of the audience, Iain Scott, of the Triple Earth label, was so moved by the Bagamoyo College of Arts's music that he organised a recording session. The result, in 1985, was the immaculate Tanzania Yetu (Our Tanzania), Triple Earth's inaugural album, and the first step in Zawose's colonisation of the non-African mind. Such was the album's impact that the composer and former Grateful Dead keyboardist Tom Constanten used it with his students in their composition lessons, so keen was he to share its possibilities for cross- and polyrhythms." (from the 2004 Obituary of Hukwe Zawose in The Guardian by Ken Hunt)