Music in Tanzania

Music is a huge part of everyday life in Tanzania.  But, it might sound a bit different than what you would expect if you've seen movies of Africa with traditional African music in them.  It has definitely evolved over the years, as Western influence and availability of electricity have changed things.

Music is also becoming more and more a part of our work, as we look at ways to promote mother tongue literacy and creative, meaningul use of Scripture.  In an effort to share some glimpses of what music is like around Musoma, we've put three different video clips on YouTube.  Click on the links below to check them out!

http://youtu.be/OzbqiLB3JwQ

This is from a public event we went to on a Sunday afternoon in 2010.  Approximately ten different choirs, some of which had traveled from out of town, performed different songs with energetic dance steps.

 http://youtu.be/9cQzxJh3XyY

 We had a series of literacy workshops at the office in 2011, working with eight different language groups.  During one series, some of groups wrote songs based from Luke and performed them on the last day of the week-long workshop.  This is the Jita group performing a song based on Luke 24.

 http://youtu.be/gxsW3IcGvQQ

This choir performed several songs at the Zanaki Luke dedication in early December.  They were a huge hit with their creative songs, many of which were in Zanaki.  Since the dedication, they have been traveling to different churches to perform and are also hoping to make a recording soon.

 

This is the song book which is used in many Tanzanian churches.  All of the songs are in Swahili, and you might notice that most of the songs are translated from Western hymns.  Some have retained the original melody, and others are quite different.  You rarely see one of these books in good condition because they're used a lot!  Just in the last few weeks we've taken some initial steps to hopefully develop some similar songbooks in the Ikoma language.