EVERY GENRE PROJECT - April 9 - Bongo Flava
Genre of the Day - Bongo Flava
Album of the Day - Machozi Jasho na Damu by Professor Jay (2001)
April 9, 2024
Maybe I need to keep a running list of uncanny musical coincidences this column leads me through. Just last night, I was talking about Dar es Salaam with people who had a friend from there. Today, we get a genre that hails from the exact same Tanzanian city. Like yesterday’s solar eclipse, sometimes this column aligns with life and knocks me out with its strangeness. Okay, so maybe that’s not as interesting as an eclipse. There’s no takeaway to you as a reader. I just love to yap about a coincidence. But I often reflect on some of my favorite albums and feel they were released at the perfect time for me to have absorbed them: part of our deep emotional connection with music is cultivated by the time it was served to you.
Though yesterday’s genre also exemplified how a single city can spring forth a genre with greater regional impact, today’s genre draws more from-of-the-moment hip-hop trends than older samples. As hip-hop’s influence in Africa became entrenched throughout the continent in the 1990s, local artists in Dar es Salaam began mixing Tanzanian and regional pop genres like taarab into hip-hop beats. It's a great reminder of one of the simplest powers of hip-hop music: all you need is a beat, you can meld those beats to fit the language you’re rapping in, and the beat can be anything. It’s the perfect musical canvas to add local flavors and new ideas into simultaneously.
Today’s emcee not only pushed forth the envelope in Tanzanian hip-hop as a pioneer of bongo flava, but also probed one of hip-hop’s other most enduring aspects: the power of the pen to push politically and criticize governmental incompetence. He also extended this power into the world briefly as a member of parliament from 2015 until 2020. While I can’t find much information about his impact in parliament, his political instincts go back a long way to even songs on this album that bitingly imitate incompetent leaders, especially on important health issues like HIV/AIDS. Given that he became enough of a celebrity that Nairobi News was randomly covering his stance on marriage in 2014 (he was waiting), it’s clear his impact reverberates way back from his conscious music.
His 2001 hip-hop statement translates to “Tears Sweat and Blood.” It’s a dramatic and grand title that often aligns with his more political statements like the aforementioned “Ndio Mzee” (Yes Old Man) that unfolds like a speech. He also includes lines defending rap from the notion held by some Tanzanians unaccustomed to the genre that it was music made by ‘hooligans’ and lauds its powers an agent for change. However, he can also easily maneuver his way to party-anthem beats which continue to sustain bongo flava’s popularity like the synthesized string jump of “Piga Makofi” (Clap Your Hands) and the incorporation of female Swahili vocalists on “Bongo Dar Es Salaam.” His rapping feels straightforwardly laidback, yet he can also become more authoritative, allowing him to straddle these two modes expertly. It’s a crafty sonic blend of Swahili pop and contemporary American hip hop as well as a blend of purpose with the more political and the more community-affirming, festive declarations. One does wonder how his rap career figured in his political journey, though.