Thanks Helen from http://www.african-music-safari.com/ for your question on Tanzanian music.
Tanzanian music has been growing and growing, much of the traditional style music has now been for cultural events and for other special occasions while music styles such as Hip-Hop, R&B, pop, Zouk, Taarab and dance music have been dominating the music industry. This means Tanzanian music has been highly influenced by foreign music styles. For example there various music artists from D.R.Congo who are signed by various dance music groups. This is because the D.R.Congo Zouk music has been of a influence in Tanzania.
Among youths it is R&B and Hip-Hop that have been doing good for the past ten years. There even came a name known as Bongo flavor, which it has been of a controversy as there has been various artists and other stake holders differ in what this means. Other group says ‘Bongo Flavor’ stands for all music produced in Tanzania being R&B, Hip-Hop, Pop and other music styles that are regarded as new generation music. The other group mainly by some artists of Hip-Hip claim Bongo Flavor to be a music style that is more of a mix of R&B, Zouk, Pop and some local styles, and that Hip-Hop stands alone. For now this tension has been cooling and so far the first group seems to be winning by wanting the name Bongo Flavor to represent all urban youths music from Tanzania. ‘Bongo’ is a nickname for Dar es Salaam that now has been extended it’s meaning to mean the whole of Tanzania. Bongo is a Swahili word for brain and it’s creativity. Tanzanians are joked of being able to get out of any situation, cleverness is how we can say it.
Traditional music has been losing it glory from Tanzanian audiences as there are very few of them that even make it to the mainstream radio plays. Example of artists who made it to a specific period of fame and success through traditional music includes Saida Karoli, she got fame and success for a certain period but as many other traditional music artists could not maintain attention of Tanzanian music lovers for such a long time.
Shortly I can say that there is a lot to be done on raising the position of traditional music in Tanzania, because at the end of the day this is the only music style that can identify us as Tanzanians. On the other hand here is the music of ‘globalized’ Tanzanians, ‘Bongo Flavor’, a source of entertainment and education to the society while at the other hand it is a source of emplyment to hundreds of Tanzania youths.
NB; I have have originally post this article for www.askatanzanian.wordpress.com , a place to ask anything about Tanzanians and Tanzania!
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