Swahili "Taraab" music

I'm not a huge fan of taarab, all the elemnts for me to like it are there but i've never really clicked. i'll ask friends who work with it for more modern suggestions tho.

This is what I'm listening to.

There is sometimes a lighter touch in these songs that kind of throws me off. The mood reminds me more of something Caribbean or perhaps Cajun. These are just first impressions.

http://www.sternsmusic.com/disk_info.php?id=860119

Apparently this will be an ongoing series from Buda, on the model of Ethiopiques.

Zanzibar music is getting quite a push lately, 90-somthing Bi "I drink, I smoke, I don’t need a microphone" Kidude just won the Womex Lifetime Achievement award and has a documentary coming out on her life. http://www.mondomix.com/en/itws.php?artist_id=1042&reportage_id=2207

and you can get an mp3 from Zanzibara on Worldly Disorientation http://worldlydisorientation.blogs.com/

Zanzibara 2 opens the lid on the region’s musical past—its commercial recordings have been all but impossible to locate, let alone know about. Golden Years of Mombasa taarab focuses on work cut between 1965-1975 on the titular island-city off the Kenyan coast. It’s a small group taarab sound the vividly illustrates the natural polyglot nature of much of the music from the area, where Arabic classical music swirls with native rhythms and gets spiked with influences from as far as India and Japan. The tracks here combine hand percussion, strings, and prominent oud, abetted by a mixture of either organ, harmonium, or accordion as well as amplified tashkoto, a Japanese string instrument that in these hands comes off as cross between sitar and electric guitar. It’s topped off by fantastic singing—soulful, leisurely, and melodic, including the unexpected mark of Bollywood sensibilities, long a favorite form of recreation for the locals. There’s nothing else in the world like this phenomenal stuff. Bring on volumes 3-20 and beyond.

I thought you that was a description of sexual orientation rather than someone's name. Kind of reads like a personal ad.

I'm not feeling this stuff I've heard in the Zanzibara series. The songs structures/insrumentation are pretty closely modelled on Arabic music, and the differences in vocal timbre are for the worst (to my ears), so I'd rather just go to the original.

Wow, they're really butchering this Abdel Wahab song!

Screw this. I'm putting on either the Fairouz version or the Abdel Wahab version.

Check this out, RS:
http://www.emusic.com/album/Various-Artists-Music-of-the-Waswahili-of-Lamu-Kenya-Vol-3-Sec-MP3-Download/11004459.html

(other two volumes, both sacred music, also available.)

>I'm not feeling this stuff I've heard in the Zanzibara series. The songs structures/insrumentation are pretty closely modelled on Arabic music, and the differences in vocal timbre are for the worst (to my ears), so I'd rather just go to the original.

― _Rockist__Scientist_, Saturday, March 15, 2008 6:48 PM (6 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
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I'm really loving the Zanzibara vol 3 set so am intrigued by what its modelled on if I'm reading that right. Not being familiar with taht much arabic material I don't know what that would be.
Wonder if instrumentation would be anything like the same. & just loving what they've done with what they have there. To me it is experienced sui generis and seems to stand up , not sure if it would lose that at all if something close to it turned up as its model. Would think that part of the charm of music like this is the reinterpretation into the culture of the players. Somewhat parallel to people from London reinterpreting r'n'b into their own thing in the 60s or something.

Would think that part of the charm of music like this is the reinterpretation into the culture of the players.

Yes, I agree with you.

Posted this on the rolling outernational thread, but may as well post it here as well

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/23/travel/where-tanzania-taps-its-feet.html

It was 11 on a Sunday night in Tanzania’s largest city, and members of Jahazi Modern Taarab, a popular local group, were performing a spirited song about love gone wrong, featuring a male-female call-and-response. Young men, chewing khat leaves and tapping their feet to the music, sat in white plastic chairs next to older women in neon-colored headscarves. For certain songs, the crowd rushed to the dance floor en masse.
Stop by the hotel on any Sunday and you’ll find the band in full swing. Indeed, many bands in this laid-back city on the Indian Ocean have regular gigs at the same venues every weekend, and as many as four concerts at other clubs during the week — all part of a boisterous and exciting music scene that rivals that of any in Eastern Africa.