UDSM

For a more formal academic route into music, Tanzania’s flagship public university, the University of Dar es Salaam (UDSM), offers a long-established pathway through its Department of Fine and Performing Arts, where music sits alongside theatre and visual arts.  UDSM’s institutional origins date to 25 October 1961, when it began as a college, later expanding into a full-fledged university, history that frames the department’s music programmes within the country’s broader post-independence higher-education architecture. 

The department’s own timeline carries its own headlines. Sector documentation notes that the unit was established in March 1975, then called the Department of Arts, Music and Theatre, before later curriculum reforms led to a rebranding as the Department of Fine and Performing Arts in 1996. Organisationally, it falls under UDSM’s arts-and-humanities structures, reflecting the university’s periodic reorganisations into colleges and departments designed to respond to changing academic and labour-market demands. 

From a programme standpoint, the department is positioned as a comprehensive training and research base. It is reported to offer undergraduate degrees including BA (Music) (alongside art/design, film/television, and theatre), and postgraduate routes up to MA and PhD, indicating a mandate that spans practice, scholarship, and advanced research. UDSM’s own programme listing for the BA in Music places it within the College of Humanities’ undergraduate offerings, reinforcing that music education here is not peripheral, it is built into the university’s formal degree architecture.