Tanzania Heritage Project (Radio Tanzania)

Bio

Radio Tanzania’s broadcast archive (Tanzania Heritage Project) contains over 100,000 hours of government-sponsored dance music, moralistic radio dramas, educational songs about malaria, and ethnographic recordings from over 100 of Tanzania’s tribes. It is a strictly analog affair where everything is recorded on reel-to-reel tape using technology donated from the BBC in the 1960′s.

The tapes are labeled and well-organized, but their condition is beginning to deteriorate. Each tape has typewritten track listings and artist information. The earliest recording is from 1958. The track information is quite detailed; it even gives the recommended dance step. The music in the archives represents the evolution of the muziki wa dansi sound, from early tribal recordings of polyrhythmic drumming to Cuban-inspired Afro-rhumba and jazz with full fourteen-piece orchestras.

In its heyday, Tanzania Broadcasting Corporation was known as Radio Tanzania Dar-es-Salaam, and by executive fiat, was the only legal radio station in the entire country. As part of a bid to create an “authentic” Swahili culture, the first President of Tanzania, Julius K. Nyerere, created the Ministry of Youth and Culture. RTD was the only radio station in the country, there were no private broadcasts, and government departments and parastatal organizations sponsored many of the bands. For example, Uhamiaji Jazz was run by the immigration department, Police Jazz and Magereza Jazz by the prisons, Mzinga Troupe by the Army, Vijana Jazz by the youth wing of the ruling socialist party, and NUTA Jazz band, owned by the Tanzanian workers’ union (National Union of Tanganyika Workers). This was a top-down enterprise: musicians were sometimes assigned positions in bands, tour dates were dictated by bureaucrats, the state owned many of the instruments, and the audio masters were considered property of the radio station, to the chagrin of musicians who never received royalties for their work.

TZDar es Salaam, Tanzania

Contact

+255682143200
Radio Tanzania
Profile added by Ano Shumba on 29 Sep 2015
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