The Cultural Music Club of Zanzibar - Shime - CD Home Page | Newest Releases More music from Zanzibar and Tanzania

Search for music Need Help?

The Cultural Music Club of Zanzibar Shime (World Village) They began life as part of the youth organization of the Afro Shirazi Party during Zanzibar's struggle for independence back in 1956. Today it is not only the largest, but also one of the most prolific and successful orchestras of Zanzibar as they present taarab music. They perform new compositions and have developed a distinct and uniquely Swahili style. Listen Kidumbaki, Part I: Babu / Naumwa Yangu Haikuhusu

More info: New York Times concert review: Culture Musical Club of Zanzibar sounded like two different bands in its two sets at Makor on Wednesday night, a rare chance for New Yorkers to hear the East African music called taarab. The first set was elegant pop, rooted mostly in Arabic music but with hints of India and the Caribbean. And the second was unmistakably African: frisky, nonstop, propulsive dance music. Culture Musical Club isn’t a revivalist project like the Buena Vista Social Club. The band is named after the club in Stone Town in Zanzibar, where it rehearses. Zanzibar, a spice island in the Indian Ocean off the coast of Tanzania, has long been on international trade routes, and its music looks west to mainland Africa, north to the Middle East and east to the Indian subcontinent. For the first set, Culture Musical Club used a lineup something like an Egyptian pop orchestra: oud, qanun (zither), accordion, three violins, dumbek (hand drum), rika (tambourine) and bass accompanying three lead singers: two women (Rukia Ramadhani and Amina) and a man, Makame Faki, all singing love songs. The women sang in long, gentle lines, with the gliding ornaments of Indian music, answered by the fluttery phrases of oud and qanun. Mr. Faki was more forceful, with his voice sometimes taking on the sharp, soaring tone of African traditional singers; he got the audience clapping along. And as the early set picked up momentum, there was also a lilt in the music, with hints of bolero and cha-cha, or perhaps their African antecedents. The music was finely detailed and urbane, and no harbinger of what followed. The group returned for the second set with maracas, an African bass called a sanduku and a pair of hand drums, called kidumbaks, that resemble both Middle Eastern dumbeks and South Indian and Pakistani drums. The music they played, usually heard at wedding parties, is also called kidumbak. The songs ride on the drums and maracas and on modal, circling violin melodies, like hoedown fiddles gone back to Africa. Flanking the band were two female dancers gifted at rump rotation, who also swiveled their way through the audience. The lead singers stepped forward to sing short lines that the rest of the band sang back to them, with some members ululating up above as the violinists dug in and the music gathered speed. It was incantatory party music, and before the set was done, the stage was filled with audience members dancing along. - Jon Parales Culture Musical Club began life as part of the youth organization of the Afro Shirazi Party during Zanzibar's struggle for independence back in 1956. Today, Culture Musical Club is not only the largest, but also one of the most prolific and successful orchestras of Zanzibar as they present taarab music, Swahili style at its best. In addition to innumerable performances in Stone Town, villages of Zanzibar and on Tanzania mainland, this group has toured internationally with outstanding success and has won over audiences in France, Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, the Arab Emirates and Reunion. They perform new compositions on a regular basis and have developed a distinct and uniquely Swahili style. Their CD-releases have made the name Culture Musical Club known to audiences throughout the world, so much so that rehearsals in their clubhouse have become somewhat of a tourist attraction. This, however, does not interfere with the first and foremost aim of their social gathering - namely to enjoy music and "to be moved" by it, as the original meaning of the word "taarab" implies.

Other recordings you might like: various Music from Tanzania and Zanzibar Hugh Tracey recordings Colonial Dance Bands