Swahili "Taraab" music

(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
=====================================================================================================
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.