Zenj to Bongo to Zenj

I'm back from Dar es Salaam. I have a computer that works. Still haven't figured out what the hell is going on with my email all of a sudden not working, something about a massive delay in the traceroute somewhere in europe? Right. Ask your ISP, they said......



Kipande and Khamis in front of Alakaifek.

Today I hooked up with Khamis who runs Kizoro Presents and he took me to Alkeifak over at Darajani to check out their taarab collection. It seems that he's the dude for taarab in town. They work mostly with cassettes. A lot of the cassettes that are for sale are simply live recordings of Malindi Music Club (Ikhwaan Safaa) and variations on their configuration. He showed me a CD which they were just begining to print the covers for and I asked if it was a pirate copy. Not exactly, although they do have some pirate stuff there. That particular record was recorded by a Zanzibari guy living in France. Upon completion of the production of the record in France, he visited Zanzibar and essentially sold "copying rights" to a bunch of shops around town. Total DIY punk rock setup. That seems to be pretty common.

The one main exception is the Culture Musical Club which is connected to Werner Graebner. They are under contract and about the only record of theirs that you find around is the record recorded and produced by Mr. Graebner. Because Malindi Music Club (Ikwaan Safaa) is much more relaxed and informal, it's possible to negotiate things with much more flexibility. Mr. Kiponde had 2 proposals for me. One to transfer as many cassettes to CD, remastering them in the process. Then Kizoro Presents would deal with the covers and duplication. All of the music that he wants to sell in this way, he knows the artists and has (or will have) agreements with them. Seems like a pretty good deal for everybody all in all. Artists get paid, music gets out there, and I get some free music for my time. The other proposal was that we hire a slightly smaller orchestra to play selected songs. We record this and release it. I got pretty excited about this, even though I realized it's not really even remotely possible right now because I don't have the gear to do it. I just thought it was exciting to have the connections to be able to do something like that. Maybe for a future trip to Zanzibar........So, the conclusion is that I will transfer 10 cassettes for them and I get to keep the CDs for my own work. There was some talk of sampling rights as well, but that never got discussed in detail. I'm gonna have a listen and work that out later. I'm happy just to have some new music. Now I'm just waiting for them to get me a cassette deck.



Matona the front man surrounded by the ladies.

Speaking of Ikwaan Safaa, I went and saw them at their notorious venue, the Haile Selassie Primary School. The venue was the open courtyard/basketball court in the center of the grounds. I got there a bit late and there were only a handfull of people there, so I took off and came back even later. By that time, they were already underway. The music was cool, but honestly, I was a little disappointed. the lame Yamaha keyboards were on equal level with the orchestra playing cheesy electric piano patches. so, every once in a while, there would be a sort of call and response type thing typical in egyptian orchestras between the strings (5 violins and a contrabass) and the keyboard. It was like switching the cheese switch back and forth. Aside from these moments, the keyboard sat more humbly in the mix most of the time. There were quite a few singers who came up and did there thing. Every once in a while the feedback came up with a vengeance. It was kind of funny to see almost everyone put their hands over their ears all at the same time. Of course, I sat there imagining the potential of such distorted feed back moments and chuckled to myself that surely I was the only one enjoying the noise. The ladies! The women were dressed absolutely to the 9s and were looking GOOD. The dresses were super extravagant. It was almost more of a beauty pagaent than anything else. Whenever the singer would sing a verse they liked, the women would all start getting up and walking toward the stage waving money in their hands. Seemed like the bigger the bill, the longer you could stand dancing in front of the singer when you got there. Although, I saw one woman who was flaunting a Tsh10,000 note and she never gave it away! It also seemed like the women going up there were unmarried women showing off their stuff. I liked that. Every once in a while a man would go up and give something and then rush away sort of embarassed. There was one guy who was special guest singer and then hung around bouncing between different circles in the audience. Saying hello to everybody. Then he'd get up and singer a tune. His shirt was this, I don't know, silk, sharp cut job with gold, silver and black threading. Very much styling and shining brightly. The orchestra were a bit more subdued in their black ties. Matona came up (he also played violin and bongos) to sing a song. Jeez! The women loved him. There must have been 25 women gathered around him singing along and dancing. Man, he was holding it down.


BTB in "the studio."

In other news, I recorded with BTB. They were super excited to be "in the studio." Their cell phone rang a few times and they told everybody that they were in the studio and busy. The excitement dwindled after not too long and as the reality of being under the sonic microscope set in. They didn't have much studio experience and I realized that the challenge was to help them bring the nice live energy that I heard in their reverb chamber (see below) to the studio. They couldn't seem to do any of the verses in the same time more than once. So, I recorded the chorus, pasted it out and setup the times for the verses. Then had each of them go over their verses again until they hit the right time (even though the performance wasn't so hot) and then made a bounce of the full mix and the beat and chorus. Then I asked them to go and practice. Tonight we will record again.


I had a bit of a similar experience with Mjus, who I finally managed to hook up with. He liked a 75 bpm track and already had lyrics to go on it. he also was haviing trouble getting the verses to fit in the appropriate time, so I made him a full mix and beat and chorus. We'll meet later this week.

Still can't seem to hook up with Fid Q, who was supposed to come over today from Dar es Salaam. He's getting ready to go to the UK to do a show. Hopefully, we can hook up before he takes off.


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This was to be my last post before my power adaptor died.......a little out of order now, but I don't imagine it makes that big a difference, does it?

Checked out BTB (Brown Town Boys) today. They just got a CD from a friend in Dar es Salaam with the full track and the instrumental or beat and chorus. "Beat and chorus" is the catch phrase for base or instrumental. It's common to have use a CD of the instrumental and the backing vox for performance. They were singing on top of their friends track at their club house. Beat and chorus playing on a sound system made of cannibalized audio equipment and their voices filling the super all concrete room was spectacular. Decided that I'd setup a special session just to get the verb in that room and their voices.

Still grinding away on a couple few different remixes and mixes. Been doing everything in my headphones. Gets a little tiring on the ears after a while. Maybe next time I'll have to pack some of those little self powered monitors. The battery on my laptop seems to be crapping out or maybe the power input circuitry of it is fucked up because it only sometimes starts charging when I plug it in. But, it always gets down to around 6 % and I think oh shit. and then it starts charging of its own accord. The electricity is definitely suspect. It oscillates quite a bit and the other day it just went out. But, that was because Sheahani didn't put more credits in (all houses have an electricity meter with a keypad and a digital readout. You go to the electric company, buy a code and then plug it in at your house. The new amount comes up on the readout. People say that it's about $1/day to power an apartment. Anyway, electricity is sketchy and the plugs are the ugly english stylee and sometimes the round 3 pins like in India and my adaptors never seem to fit just right. So, I wonder.....I know there is a mac vendor in dar es salaam........

Drove to Fumba, which is about 25km south of Stone Town to check things out. It was a dusty and really rugged road starting from where the asphalt ends near the airport. I went to the local beach (covered in plastic bags) and to the fancy schmanzy resort (not covered in plastic bags). The guards at the gate asked me to give a ride to their friend back to town. I warned him that I hadn't ridden with anyone on the back (since I had an accident doing exactly that back in 1991 in Phoenix), but I'd try if he wanted. It was totally fine until we approached the police checkpoint. Fortunately, I had been driving on the wrong side of the road. It so rutted with holes that 'the way' of the road criss crosses and meanders through potholes and I had been zen-ly following my path that took me to the right side of the road and just out of sight of where the crew of 6 or so cops was seated under a tree. But, we could see the black and white painted 55 gallon drums with the big stick on top blocking the road. He jumped off and went to the other side. I waited a bit and went on. There I met my new friend Ahmed (we had met on my way out to Fumba). I managed to remember his name and greeted him. Salaam alaikum, mambo vipi? Habari yako? Habari ya kazi? Asante sana. Then he started telling me that he was hungry and hadn't eaten and he had no money and that both of his parents were dead and could i please help him? I said I don't know (it sure is convenient when you can fib that you don't speak a language and selectively understand things. For the life of me, I can't do that in English or Portuguese, thank god my swahili is terrible). How would you like me to help you? He actually said that he wanted me to give him money. He didn't have me on anything! AND, he was my FRIEND. Ha ha. I just said no and he said okay, see you next time. We shook hands and I cruised around the bend to pick up my passenger.