The latest in Afropop Worldwide's Hip Hop series is the first in a series on African hip hop which is the youth music of the continent and most of the world. For this program, we focused on Senegal, the leader of the African hip hop revolution and Tanzania, the most active center for hip hop production in East Africa. Our guides are Timothy Mangin, an ethnomusicologist at Columbia University whose research work is based in Dakar Senegal, and Alex Perullo, a teacher and writer based in Bryant College in Rhode Island. The full transcripts of the interviews with Mangin and Perullo appear below.

Interviews by Sean Barlow and Banning Eyre.
Photographs of the hip hop scene in Dakar by Timothy Mangin.
Transcription and editing: D. Misha Turner

A PARTICULAR NIGHT ON THE SCENE IN HIP HOP DAR ES SALAAM

AP: In downtown Dar es Salaam at night on the weekends, you'll find several shows going on. Sometimes these are at clubs and sometimes at hotels. At the hotels, they tend to be for big album releases. Artists will release an album and have a lot of people show up. A couple of thousand people will come. A long list of artists will be performing with them. You walk into the club generally at around nine o'clock at night the first artist goes on. The main artist will go on to around midnight. You see a lot of males, people walking around, very crowded, a lot of people drinking beer, some drinking soda. But the atmosphere is fairly calm until the music starts. And then onto the stage walks a DJ, and he'll tell stories, and tell people what they're going to say, get the kind of excited. You don't really get the feeling that sure at hip-hop concert among all this youth in Dar es Salaam. It's very relaxed. It feels kind of like you're watching TV. People are just kind of observing.

And then the main artist coming on stage, the mood starts changing. Now it's about 10, 10:30 and night, and at once you get to the really popular acts--the acts that have big hits on the radio, such as Mags Magangwe Mobb, Juma Nature, Mr II, Dola Soul, Belozi Dola, and Joni Woka. They walk on stage, and the crowd starts to move. Magangwe Mobb may walk on stage--these two youths in their early twenties and they're from a very poor neighborhood in Dar es Salaam called Temeke--dressed in their best clothes: nice Adidas shirt on, baggy pants, sunglasses, shirts over their jackets, and things like that. They walk out on stage, and they always start the same way. It doesn't matter if your uptown or downtown at around show is Dar es Salaam start out with, "Yo yo! Yo yo!"

So, Magangwe Mobb, as soon as they walk out, all of their peers and friends from Temeke--or people from similar areas of Dar es Salaam--will jump up and start to dance. The music is loud. It is something! There are huge speakers, and you really hear their voices. Even though the music is loud you always hear their voices crystal-clear because the words are so important. And so you have this pumping music, you have people dancing around, you have people waving flags. Sometimes they carried banners around proclaiming their home districts: "Temeke", or "I Like Magangwe Mobb." They run around the whole building with these huge flags. And the music will just go on until the band has pulled off the stage. They might play only three songs, but they start to get the audience really energized and really excited, and is billed starts to happen until you get to the final, the main act.

HIP HOP HISTORY IN TANZANIA

AP: [Hip Hop] goes back to 1984 actually. Fresh X and Conway Francis were able to get recordings from the United States and Europe. Before that, he was a socialist country, and it was very difficult to get any materials from outside the country, including VCRs, television sets, cassette recorders, and records. The only way to be able to get things was if you had family abroad. Well Fresh Z and Conway Francis both came from fairly well-off families. They live in Oyster Day, which is a well-to-do neighborhood of Dar es Salaam. So they were able to get recordings and watch videos like "Breakin'" Breakin' 2-Electric Boogloo".

Fresh X was sort of an anomaly because he started rapping in Swahili almost immediately and composing some of his own songs. People who followed him mimicked American music. It had a short life at that time. Break dancing was really the hot thing…. They performed all over the city, again mainly to wealthy kids.

[The scene] changed around 1990. More people started hear the music, cassette tapes started coming in. It was easy to record the music and pass it around. Then competition started happening… People became more notorious with the music… In 1991, there was a competition called "Yo Rap Bonanza" at the New Africa Hotel in Dar es Salaam. This featured a lot of great musicians: Ningawan, Easy B, D-Robb, KBCY. All these famous Tanzanian artists. In 1991, all groups were performing in English. The big thing was to copy, word for word, the American songs. Using the same music and everything. But then one artist at that competition named Saleh Ajabry performed a song based on "Ice Ice Baby" by Vanilla Ice. But he wrote the lyrics in Swahili, and he wrote it partly about HIV and AIDS. This is 1991! This was a hit, the first single to be released! People were really excited about this. And he won the competition for "Yo Rap Bonanza". So that's really the start of this Swahili-oriented Rap, beginning with Saleh Ajabry. And then all these other rappers, hearing this album now being played on cassette all over Dar es Salaam, are picking up on the message. That's really where it started, the Swahili part about it.

THE SOCIALIST INFLUENCE IN TANZANIA & CENSORSHIP

AP: Socialism lasted from the late 1960s until 1984, strictly speaking, but has remained powerful in the country even today. So that also limited what people could do. There was not a lot of wealth for people to get out of the city and see other things…. Plus, African-American music has had an influence on Tanzanian music for a long time…from 1950s jazz to James Brown in 1960s, soul and R&B in the 70's. Until radio stations and foreign music, all these African American styles were very prominent and a lot of people mimicked them, in the dansi music.

The main radio station in Dar es Salaam is Radio Tanzania. They had many services, channels, at the time, but the Swahili one, the one most people listen to. They banned foreign music completely. It had to be strictly African or Tanzanian content. And once they did that, the music industry grew locally, but it also created a sort of void where they didn't hear foreign music that they were influenced by. So that happened from '71 until--well, it depends how you look at it--1994. That's when independent radio stations came in. The first was Radio 1. They played a lot of hip-hop.

COMPARISIONS BETWEEN THE HIP HOP OF SCENE IN SENEGAL FROM DAR ES SALAAM

AP: There is a similarity, but there's also a great difference between that and Dar es Salaam. I'll do the contemporary thing, but let me just say one other thing about the split, because I think it is important. After that "Yo Rap Bonanza" competition in 1991 a lot of the artists that performed were very, very angry that Saleh Ajabry won. There was a lot of name-calling during that concert, and some of the artists decided to form their own faction of hip-hop, and they called it "Underground Hip-Hop." They did not want to be associated with this now populist artist Saleh Ajabry who is going to be rapping in Swahili, and about themes that cater to the general populace. They wanted to focus on themes that they felt were tied closely to American hip-hop. So they made sure it was tied to American themes, sung in English. There was a very popular group called the Kwanzaa Unit. They remain somewhat popular today. There's still some of them around, but most of them are scattered around. One is in Arkansas. One is in Canada. But they formed sort of a critical mass on the other side. They were "Underground". They didn't get recorded as much. They sang in English, about American themes. So they are very small group in Tanzanian.

The Tanzanian underground groups use a lot of foul language--which the other groups don't do--a lot of swearing, a lot of violent pictures. Not always, but they can't use them more, whereas the mainstream popular music in Kiswahili uses none of that. You can't swear. You can't talk about violent things. You can't even talk about sex very directly, or these things will not be aired on the radio. Again, this has a lot to do with the socialist past and the country. So it is quite a bit different.

HIP HOP YOUTH

AP: A lot of times you will hear adults refer to youth as wahuni, or hooligans. This has somewhat changed over the past couple of years as hip-hop has gained more widespread attention, and youth have sung about specific issues, such as problems with politics and poverty. They are seen as the voices of the poor, the voices of the underprivileged, the voices of the marginalized. And because they do all this in music, a lot of people start seeing rap music as helpful. These are youth who are doing something positive. And this has sort of changed the attitude a little bit about youth. Not completely of course. There are still a lot of people who see youth as wahuni. But it is changing a bit, and now youth are more accepted. There's another side to it too, because a lot of adults feel sorry for the youth. They went through similar circumstances, had trouble getting jobs too. They kinda sympathize with the struggles youth are going through. The adults also sympathize with what's being said in the rap music.

MUSICAL TRADITION AS VS A POETIC TRADITION

AP: [Well, the artists] see themselves as poets. They see themselves as a new generation of poets. Tanzania has a long history of poetry, where poetry was published in newspapers and magazines. And the Tarab music and the Dansi music that came afterwards during the '50's, '60's, '70's and '80's also used a lot of poetry, a lot of poetic elements, a lot of rhyming. Swahili is a language that rhymes very easily.

So a lot of youths who heard this music were attracted to it. Listen, this is a music were youth are sharing their ideas. They are creating kind of a community throughout the city, and they're voicing their opinions, and best of all, they are not getting any kind of kickback from it. No one is saying anything bad about them. They are allowed to do this, and they are allowed to voice their opinion. So it was extremely attractive, the fact that you can be poetic, you can gain attention, you can gain a fan base, and you can have a message in your music. And this attracted a lot of youth into the music scene.

NATIONALISM, POLITICS, AND RAP TODAY

AP: Most rappers in Tanzania are very proud of the past. There is an artist called Sagi Dagi Enter, he has a song called "Dear Nyerere." Mr II was called the 'Nyerere of hip hop'. A lot of these rappers do see socialism and Nyerere as a very good thing. They often look to the past to nationalism and socialism, and they see this as much better than the people who have come after Nyerere. Now remember, they are also making the past look kind of rosy, making it look like it was a great time. Obviously they were a lot of problems during socialist time and they're kind of negating those. Instead, they often just consider the past to be much better. For instance, Professor J. has a song called "Bongo Dar es Salaam" which speaks about this. He says, "the current Bongo is not like it was in 1947." And he doesn't mean the year 1947. That's slang for the past. He's saying that what is happening now in the country is nothing like what was in the past. It was much better back then. So there is still a lot of romantic notions about the past and what it was like, and how much better it was, and how Nyerere was a great president, and socialism could have worked. It just had problems.

Now this music may sound rather Western. If you listen to early Mr II songs, it sounds rather Western. Even in the more contemporary stuff by Johnnie Walker, or Magangwe Mobb, or by Belozi Dola, it may sound very Western to our ears, but there are a lot of elements of it that are very Tanzanian.

Instrumental wise, [the music is] very Western sounding, very American sounding. It sounds like American hip-hop. But in the way those instruments are used, it's very Tanzanian. The music is more laid-back. If you listen to Mr II one of his first songs called "Hali Halisi," the music is very laid-back. It's sits behind to beat a bit, and lets the musician have kind of free space. There aren't really rich harmonies which would be in a lot of other local music. And there's a huge space between of where you hear the vocals and you hear thumping base, or deep drum parts or things like that. But these things sort of makes sense considering the history of Tanzanian music. There are a lot of elements in ngoma where you hear the same sort of thing. Space between the music and the person who is singing, or in this case rapping. There is a heavy focus on drums and percussion, just the same way in rap music. And they're sort of a laid-back feeling, even if it's upbeat. This is a very Tanzanian sound.

The intro before the song "Hali Halisi" starts out with a judge talking. And it's very difficult to understand his voice, because they used to studio technique on it that made the sound very deep, more menacing, more evil. And the voice is actually that of Belozi Dola, another rapper. But he's impersonating a judge. And the first opening part is the judge talking, and he says: "Based on the accusations brought against the accused, you are accused of negligence and loitering." And again that whole theme we talked about with loitering and youth. So the judge continues by saying that Mr II will be sentenced to five year's hard labor, and a $20 fine, and he asks Mr II: "What do you have to say for yourself?"

And Mr II kind of chimes in, "Alright, whatever, judge. If you want to claim that I've been negligent and loitering, that's fine. Whatever. You see, I don't have a job. How can I do anything? If you want me to pay a fine, that's life." That's how he ends with that line, "Yote maesha"--that's life. And then right after that begins the song, "Hali Halisi" which means "The Real Situation."

This is Mr II's view of the situation in Tanzania. He talks about how hard life is, how the police go after people, how the jury is waiting for youth in the city just throw them in jail. How there's a lot of angry citizens, how people are no longer patriotic because they don't see the government helping them, how there's certain leaders who are corrupt because they always stay in power, how politics is a dirty game, and how politicians are liars. So he says all this, and this is the first time someone was so blunt, and so direct in their lyrics. I mean people made comments before, but to say that politicians are liars was a huge deal. So this made his song very famous even though the music doesn't sound like much, the lyrics are important. You have to kind of imagine Mr. II being like the Bob Dylan of Tanzania. He is speaking about very political issues, and he's doing it very politically, even though his voice and his music may not sound as brilliant some as it is.

But Professor J. takes it a step further. In this song he actually embodies an elder, and becomes an elder politician. And it's a rather humorous song, because he starts talking about all these promises that politicians in Tanzania make when they're going up for election. If an election is occurring, you often have huge political rallies, huge speeches broadcast on radio and television. At these rallies, thousands and thousands of people gathered hear these politicians, potential next president, or person is going to represent their community, and that these talks there are a lot of things promised. Professor J. takes that to an extreme. In the song, in the first, he talks about things like turning Tanzania into Europe, abolishing poverty, making hospitals have as much medicine as there is sand in the country, making bank accounts for everyone, every young child who was born, and piping in water and milk to everyone in the country. If you've ever lived in Dar es Salaam, [you'll find people have] a lot of problems getting water delivered to many parts of Dar es Salaam. There are a lot of problems with hospitals. As well, a lot of problems with poverty. So these are huge problems that Professor J. is making, and that makes the humor in the song, because he's promising things that are impossible. And what's even funnier is that the audience is listening to him keep saying; "Ndio Mzee"--"Yes, Elder." So in the chorus, Professor J. says: "I will make Tanzania happy" and they say, "yes, Elder". And he goes on says, "I will be a great leader." "Yes, Elder." "I will abolish problems." "Yes, Elder." And they continue on that way.

This is sort of that kind of mind control Professor J. is commenting on. A lot of politicians really try to say a lot of what they're going to do, but in effect, when it comes down to them winning, they do not have it. They are just kind of the yes man of politics.

The current president of Tanzania, whose name is Mkapa, he took those words "Ndio Mzee" and put them into one of his talks. It received a lot of laughter at the meeting… It was that, because you take in this popular Tanzanian rap and acknowledged that it exist, and said, "I will eliminate Ndio Mzee from my administration. I will emanate these yes man, these elders who just say I will do it or it can for you. I will eliminate them from my administration." It was probably just a publicity stunt, but the fact that even [he]acknowledged the song existed was pretty empowering. And Professor J. got a big kick out of Mkapa using his words in the speech.

Mkapa's use of Professor Jay's words acknowledged that rap music was popular, that it could raise people's attention, and that it could get even the attention of the president of the country. On the other hand, he was probably just using it to defuse the issue. There is no way that he's really going to get rid of these people in his administration. No one was fired because he said "Ndio Mzee." But, that doesn't mean you didn't see this as a very positive way to use their music. And so, even though the socially and politically oriented rap is diminishing a little bit, it's still important to realize that these wraps to have an important influence and local community, all away at the President.

Professor J. had a song a couple of years ago called "Ngukoa Vipi"--"What would it be like?" "What would it be like if I Tanzania was like Europe? What it be like if I had a great car? What would it be like all these things changed?" So he's asking basically how would it be like if I could have all these different things and I was born in a different country, or by lifted to a different place. And it was sort of an interesting issue for a lot of youth who questioned the sort of fate as the urban poor in Tanzania. And so it was a big hit. And then he came out with the song in 2003 called "Alikufa kwa ngoma" which means "He died of AIDS". Ngoma is sometimes slang for sex, but it's more slang for AIDS. And so the song itself is a discussion of someone who is a very important figure in the community and was always telling people that they "should wear a condom when they're having sex" because that "will protect them from AIDS". Throughout the song, he goes on discussing how important it is. Even though all these people are dying of AIDS, he says "you need to wear condom because that will protect you". And the irony of the song is that the person who is telling the story, the one who is telling people all this, ends up dying of AIDS. And what was most striking about the song is that in the video that came out, which was released soon after the song, shows Mwanafalasafa getting into a coffin at the end of the song. Not getting into a coffin, but in a coffin. He has died of AIDS. Here is someone who is basically saying you can really die. You need to practice what you preach. If you tell your friends that they need to wear condoms, you also need to wear condom. This is important. This is a matter of life and death. And that the end of the first, he asks, "if he dies of AIDS, what has he gained?" There is no gain from dying from AIDS. There is no gain from telling other people to wear a condom and not wearing one yourself. So it was a very powerful song, because no one talked directly about this AIDS epidemic that is sort of hitting Tanzania.

For instance on the Joni Woka song "Walimu" he asked strongly during the first verse because he's supposed to be a teacher, and he's asking all these Tanzanians, "we have all these teachers who don't have a good standard of life. They don't have good salaries. They don't even make much money. Their children used profanities. What are we doing?" So he's sort of acting drunk in order to emphasize the point. "Look, I was a former teacher. Look at me now. I'm a drunk. I can't even go in the classroom and teach anymore." So the point of the song is noting the changes that need to be made. In the last verse of the song they're in the classroom and it sort of changes the mood of the song. But acting drunk sort of gives the impression that maybe we've gone too far in letting his promise to the teachers go for so long.

Joni Woka in this song "Walimu" is able to somewhat diminish the conflict that he proposes. I mean the lyrics are very, very strong. In the chorus, he says, "I asked the question. Why aren't you answering this?" It's a very direct question that doesn't usually happen in Tanzanian conversation. But by being drunk, it sounds sort of humorous. "I asked the question why aren't you answering this?." And so he could be distancing himself from the conflict, but it still his voice. So I don't know how much is just trying to make the character in body the meaning more than he himself is.

GETTING RAP BACK TO THE ROOTS

AP: There are several groups right now in Tanzania who are trying to adopt elements from their home cultures, from the cultural groups. So X-Plastaz is taken from Masai culture. There's another artist called Mr. Ebbo, he sings a song called "Mi Mmasai" where he talks about how he identifies with his people. That song was a big hit.

And there's a few other artists, who also rap, and they sound as if they're from a certain district in Tanzania, not from Dar es Salaam, but from somewhere else. They might sound like there from Amhia (?), and they changed their voice, and their rap style to sound like that. They became very popular, particularly among those communities who identify with that music. So it's not just Masai, but people who lived around Masai and lived around Arusha. But also just for the fact that Masai do exist in Tanzania, people enjoy listing for that. But for some reason X Plastaz, even though they do talk about cultural roots, they have always had a harsher edge to their music that for some reason, well because of its harsh roots, has not caught on in Dar es Salaam as much. Listen to "Mi Mmasai" by Mr. Ebbo. It's far more laid-back, and he grew up in Arusha for much of his life, and then moved to Tanga, and then to Dar es Salaam. So he has a much more laid-back approach to his sound.

THE CONFLICT BETWEEN RURAL AND URBAN CULTURE IN THE REALM OF WOMEN.

AP: Discussions about women are the most controversial topics that rap artists can pick up on. Their couple reasons for this. A lot discussion as to what the appropriate roles are for women in the city in an urban context. A lot of times, women are seen as inferior, second-class citizens. Those are my words. Those are words taken from a lot of people in Dar es Salaam. There are also a lot of musicians who are female who are seen as prostitutes, even if they aren't. They are just labeled that way. So women are immediately discriminated against in the scene. It's often difficult, and it's often hard to hear songs that rap about women in a positive way. There's no negative rap about women. No one is saying that women are inferior or second-class. But there are very few rap songs that are talking about the positive sides of women, or how things need to change to improve the lifestyle of women. The actual first song that cannot do this was another song by Mr. II called "Chini ya 18" which means "Under the age of 18." And the song was so popular because I talked about Mr. II walking and seeing this young girl who is under the age of 18, who had no respect for herself, who had her eyes cast downward, and had no respect. She couldn't even go home to her mother and father. And he questions this. He says, "What are we doing? Why is this happening? This woman is now having to going to prostitution because she has no other way to make a living. We've ostracized here. We haven't given any opportunity." And then at the end of the song he says, very quietly "SWAHILI". Which means "men are idiots." And then he says "Pole pole", which means "I'm sorry, I'm sorry." And it's a very stunning moment, because here this very famous musician, at the time he released this record in 2000, coming out with a song really trying to support women, and same men have made mistakes.

STYLISTIC TRENDS IN AFRICAN HIP HOP

AP: There is a duality in the music, actually. Some artists migrated from political, socially conscious music, into romantic, club scene, party sound. Particularly on the R&B side. Also on the rap side. But all R&B is very much this romantic, pleasing music. The Unique Sisters, for example. [They are] three sisters, Tanzanian by birth, [but] lived in Japan.. [They] have a song called "Bounce." It's basically just the word "bounce" repeated over and over in different ways. "You can bounce to this" they're saying partially in English. And you hear this in the clubs, trying to get people to dance. So there is this sort of non-political music.

HIP HOP CULTURAL IMPERIALISM

AP: There is this cultural imperialism theory that says that all this music that is coming from the West such as hip-hop is destroying local cultures and local ideas, and local musical trends. And to some extent, there is a little bit of truth in that, although I would hesitate to say that cultural imperialism is actually happening. The truth comes then that there are a lot of artists in Tanzania who do dress exactly like the people that they see from the United States. They wear the FUBU clothing, they wear the baggy pants, they wear the New York Yankees hats. And so they very much identified physically through dress with hip-hop in United States. They often change their names to represent various artists in United States.

But the problem with that is this is very early in the pop music. If you look at any of the other music set up [as] popular in Tanzania, muziki wa dansi, for instance, this is a music that borrowed heavily from Cuban music, from American soul, from Congolese music, and early on it didn't sound very Tanzanian from a certain perspective. But over time it started to grow into itself. It took this model from Congolese rumba, and Cuban rumba, and things like that, to make it its own sound. Most people expect that hip-hop is doing the same thing.

Earlier I mentioned that most hip-hop artists mimic the American artists they were listening to. They sung in English, and sung about American issues. But now we have artists singing [in] Swahili, and they sing about Swahili issues, about Tanzanian issues, about issues that are very much identified with their country. And you even have a lot of artists who are singing in other local languages. So I think as far as Tanzanian identity is concerned, yes, there are certain things that they're going to keep borrowing from American culture or European culture, or other African cultures, but this doesn't mean that there's going to be assorted eradication of local trends. Ngoma is still performed a lot, the traditional music. Muziki wa dansi is at its height. It's still more popular live than hip-hop is. And Tarab is still a big music, not as much in Dar es Salaam, but in other areas. So the main genres are still there. There not disappearing. There's room enough for all these genres to grow, and they each occupy different areas. Muziki wa dansi-it's a great live scene, sometimes better than the rap. Rap is sometimes better on the radio because you can hear the messages.

CHANGING STATUS OF RAPPERS IN TANZANIA

AP: Tanzanian rap artists are very important in Dar es Salaam, and the reason that they're so popular is because they serve as a voice for youth. They speak about issues that you find important. They tell that to broader communities, and they form communities themselves with people who are sympathetic to their cause. So rap artists who continue to do that, continue to talk about important issues will find people who are sympathetic to their cause. However, the direction that I see the music going [in] is unfortunately not as good as I would have hoped a few years ago. In the past few years, there's been a lot of infighting. There has even been, for the first time in Tanzania, a fight on the stage between two artists, and that brought a huge storm of criticism against the youth of the country. This is a blemish on Tanzanian rap that many people have been trying to avoid for a long time. They want to show only the positive, not the negative.

All these things are sort of blending together, and it has this sort of tension forming in Dar es Salaam. It could go one of two ways. On the one hand, if this increases, it could create a certain split in Tanzania with some artists on one side and some on the other. In fact, someone sent me an e-mail just the other day saying that there's an East-West split forming, and it's not between the Eastside or the West side. It's between the wealthy and not wealthy side of artists. On the other hand, that might be avoided because there are artists [and] such a strong contingent of radio DJs and performers who don't want to see that happen. And they may be able to hold this together so that artists continue on the path that they're headed, which is incorporating more local cultural traditions, more local sounds, more local themes into the music and making it progressed that way. So we'll have to see.

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