Highlights from Sauti za Busara Festival
CD+DVD (FW0001) - © 2008
Zanzibar Festival Classics features highlights from Sauti za Busara, the world-renowned music festival held every February in Stone Town, Zanzibar. The CD/ DVD celebrates five years of the festival’s success in promoting the wealth and variety of music from the Swahili-speaking world.
There are few CDs (and probably no DVDs) available internationally that showcase quality music from the East African region, so this new release in 2008 is very welcome.
The CD features 13 tracks from artists that have all performed at Sauti za Busara, as selected by Yusuf Mahmoud (aka DJ Yusuf), the festival director. “The tracks were carefully chosen”, he says, “firstly to reflect the variety of groups performing at the festival, and also pieces of music that we believe will still be enjoyed five or ten years from now. Whilst we celebrate five years of promoting East African music and cultural tourism in Zanzibar, we hope the international release of this CD and DVD will take the music to another level and reach people all around the world who have not yet had the chance to visit the festival. Of course, it also makes for a unique and perfect souvenir for tourists to take home with them … music reaches far deeper than words!”
Sauti za Busara (Sounds of Wisdom) has firmly established itself as one of Africa’s leading music festivals, as was recognized at the BBC Awards for World Music 2007, when DJ Yusuf was presented with the World Shaker Award. The award recognises outstanding contributions to world music by those who are rarely in the public eye (previous recipients include WOMAD director and co-founder Thomas Brooman).
Over the years, the festival has evolved into a stage for artists from across Africa. You’ll find everything there, from classic Zanzibar taarab and traditional ngoma, Rwandan folk, Ugandan pop, Tanzanian bongo flava, Senegalese hiphop, West African kora to cross cultural excursions and much more. The event attracts people of all ages and backgrounds from around East Africa and increasingly visitors from as far afield as Canada, Japan and Europe.
Among the artists featured on the Zanzibar Festival Classics CD is Bi Kidude, the island’s most famous cultural ambassador and East Africa’s barefoot diva of taarab and unyago tradition. In October 2005, Bi Kidude was presented with the World Music Expo (WOMEX) lifetime achievement award. “Whilst she is still fit to drum or to sing”, says Yusuf, “Bi Kidude is naturally welcome to perform at the festival every year!”
Also included are Chibite and Zawose Family, founded by the late Dr Hukwe Ubi Zawose, the legendary multi-instrumentalist and master musician specialising in Wagogo music of central Tanzania. Dr Zawose and Chibite have regularly recorded with international superstars at Peter Gabriel’s Real World Studios in UK; they have represented Tanzania at WOMAD festivals all around the world since the early nineties, yet surprisingly there is little knowledge or respect for these wonderful musicians at home.
Culture Musical Club is the largest and most successful taarab orchestra of Zanzibar. In addition to innumerable performances around the island, this group regularly performs internationally, winning over audiences in France, Belgium, UK, Germany, USA, Arab Emirates and Japan, with their lush sound, virtuoso instrumentals, dignified and poetic performances.
Other prolific artists include the likes of Kenya’s pop activist Eric Wainaina, Zimbabwean mbira queen Chiwoniso (with The Collaboration), bongo flava pioneers Juma Nature and Ferooz. Mchiriku favourites Jagwa Music from the ghetto suburbs of Dar, and Kilimanjaro Band, founders of the popular mduara style, also add their unique flavours to the multi-faceted compilation.
The festival is keen to nurture and encourage musical cross-fertilisations. An excellent illustration of the fruits of its “Swahili Encounters” music workshops is Dhow Crossing’s “Arebaba Pakistani”. From Bi Kidude’s songbook, here the classic taarab song is taken in new and exciting directions by teachers from Zanzibar’s Dhow Countries Music Academy in collaboration with musicians from Norway.
Yusuf Mahmoud first arrived in Zanzibar from UK in 1998 to help produce the first edition of Zanzibar International Film Festival (ZIFF), and subsequent editions of the annual Festival of the Dhow Countries, taking place each year around the beginning of July. Whilst spending five years coordinating the music and performing arts programme of ZIFF, he realised that there was room on the island for another annual festival, and the need for an event which would focus in particular on showcasing the broad spectrum of music that is created in East Africa. Hence the birth of Sauti za Busara.
The CD comes with a free DVD, featuring interviews with Yusuf who explains how ''the festival is a rare example of the regeneration of African pride and identity.'' Discussions are continued with filmmakers, music industry professionals and performing artists who give their take on the success of the festival. Extras on the DVD include performance highlights of the festival from each of the years since it began in 2004, and a trailer for the highly-acclaimed documentary feature “As Old As My Tongue; The Myth & Life of Bi Kidude.”
The sixth edition of Sauti za Busara takes place in Zanzibar during 12 – 17 February 2009.
Zanzibar Festival Classics is available in all good CD stores on the island, or by mail order from Amazon and other websites as below.
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