Traditional Music and Dance in Tanzania
Taarab and ngoma on the coast, Sukuma dance societies around Mwanza, and drumming workshops where you are taught rather than performed at.
Ngoma means the drum, the dance and the occasion all at once, which is why a hotel performance and a real ngoma are different things. This guide covers what the forms are, how the state shaped them, the story of taarab and Siti binti Saad, and where a visitor can actually hear this played seriously.
Safaris That Include Traditional Music and Dance
Traditional Music and Dance Guide in Tanzania
What ngoma actually means
The word ngoma does a great deal of work. It means the drum, it means the dance, and it means the occasion the drum and the dance belong to: a celebration, a ritual, a birth, a funeral. An ngoma is an event. That is why "going to see a ngoma" and "there is a ngoma happening" are not the same sentence, and it is the single most useful thing a visitor can understand about Tanzanian traditional music.
Ngoma varies enormously across the country. Most forms are led by drums and feature the hip movement that visitors associate with East African dance. Some use no instruments at all: the Maasai Ambrokoi and the Ngoni Ligihu are dances of jumping and stamping in which singing supplies the entire rhythm.
What is not variable is that these are functional forms. They exist to mark something. Lifted out of that context and put on a stage, an ngoma is not fake, but it is doing a different job, and the honest way to describe a hotel performance is as a performance of a dance rather than as the occasion itself.
How the state shaped the music
Tanzanian traditional music has been governed more directly than most visitors imagine, and knowing the history explains a lot about what you will and will not encounter.
Ngoma was prohibited under colonial rule, described in the language of the time as wicked and primitive. After independence the state reversed that with equal deliberation. In his 1962 inauguration speech Nyerere contrasted the European dances Tanzanians had been taught in school with named Tanzanian ones, Gombe Sugu, Mangala, Konge, Nyang'umumi and Kiduo, and asked how many people had even heard of them. Traditional dance became an instrument of national policy.
The National Arts Council, BASATA, was created by an Act of 1984 and amended by another in 2019, and it defines the country's music genres: ngoma, dansi, kwaya and taarab, with bongo flava added in 2001. From independence until 1993 all recording and distribution of music was managed by BASATA, largely through Radio Tanzania Dar es Salaam, and only the four recognised genres could be recorded or broadcast at all. A broadcasting act in 1993 opened the field to private studios and stations.
The council still regulates. It publicly maintains lists of banned songs, banned artists, banned venues and banned groups, alongside a register of artists holding valid permits. Public performance in Tanzania is licensed, which is worth knowing before drawing conclusions about what you do or do not hear in a bar.
The tradition is also changing for reasons that have nothing to do with tourism. Elders teach ngoma to young people less than they did, and young people assemble dances from many sources including bongo flava, which produces resentment in both directions: elders unhappy at what they see as inauthenticity, youth unhappy at never having been taught properly. There is a material cause too. Many traditional instruments can no longer be made, because hunting bans have cut off the animal materials they required, so guitars, microphones, amplifiers and keyboards have moved in.
A good illustration of what living repertoire looks like: a troupe in Iringa built its own dance by combining Lingunjumu and Sindimba from southern Tanzania, Mdundiko from the coast and Akasimbo from Kagera, with movement borrowed from bongo flava. That is not a corrupted tradition. That is how traditions have always worked.
Taarab, and the woman who changed it
Taarab is the coast's own form: sung Swahili poetry carried by a string-heavy ensemble, the name from the Arabic tarab, meaning delight or pleasure taken in music. It arose on Zanzibar around the 1830s out of Great Lakes, Egyptian, Arabian and South Asian materials, and reached the mainland in the 1920s. Local tradition credits Sultan Barghash with starting it, importing an Egyptian ensemble to play at the Beit al-Ajaib and sending a Zanzibari musician to Egypt to learn the qanun, who returned and formed the first orchestra.
The clubs are the institution. Ikhwani Safaa was established in 1905 and Culture Musical Club in 1958, and they remain the two names most associated with Zanzibar taarab. Alongside the orchestras grew kidumbak, smaller and rougher ensembles associated with poorer Zanzibaris, built on two small drums, a bass, violins and dancers with claves and maracas. Modern taarab includes mipasho, songs of pointed insult aimed at other women, which is a very long way from the genteel image the string section suggests.
The figure to know is Siti binti Saad. She was born Mtumwa binti Saadi around 1880 at Fumba, into slavery; her father was Nyamwezi from Tabora, her mother Zigua from Tanga, both born in Zanzibar to enslaved families working the clove plantations. She moved to Zanzibar Town in 1911, fourteen years after the abolition law of 1897, and settled in Ng'ambo.
In 1928 she and her band travelled to Bombay and recorded for His Master's Voice, becoming the first East African performers to make commercial recordings. She produced over two hundred and fifty records, with her career peaking between 1928 and 1939, and she performed until her death in 1950. Her decisive contribution was linguistic: she sang in Swahili, where earlier taarab singers had sung only in Arabic. She also added a danced and mimed element called natiki, drawn from Indian dance. After her death, women began appearing in singing clubs that had previously been entirely male, and taarab moved further into Swahili.
Gogo music and the Zawose family
The Gogo of the centre of the country have one of Tanzania's most distinctive musical traditions, built on layered voices and on the ilimba, a large lamellophone related to the mbira, and the zeze, a stringed instrument.
Hukwe Ubi Zawose, born at the end of the 1930s and died in 2003, was its great exponent. Nyerere invited him to live and work in Dar es Salaam, which took him from a regional tradition to a national and then an international platform. He recorded for Peter Gabriel's label through the 1990s and early 2000s and received a Hall of Fame award at the Tanzania Music Awards after his death. The family continues: his son Msafiri plays the zeze and the ilimba, and his daughter and granddaughter perform together as the Zawose Queens.
A caution, because it is widely implied and could not be confirmed. There is no bookable Zawose family visitor experience at Bagamoyo that could be verified. The family's connection to the town is documented; a product a visitor can arrange is not. Treat any offer of one as something to check carefully.
Where a visitor can actually hear this
There are four realistic routes, and they are not equivalent.
- The arts college at Bagamoyo, founded in 1981 and now a government agency and a regional centre of excellence, is the country's main training institution for traditional performance and home to its resident company. It runs an annual arts and culture festival in the latter part of the year, and that festival is the single best opportunity to see a wide range of Tanzanian traditional forms performed by people trained in them.
- The music academy in Stone Town, housed in the Culture Musical Club building on Vuga Road, teaches taarab and other Zanzibari forms and runs concerts. It is the most reliable place on the islands to hear taarab played seriously rather than as dinner accompaniment.
- The Zanzibar music festival is the largest gathering of regional music in the country. Its dates have moved recently, and the month is not what most published guides assume, so check the festival's own listing rather than a third-party page.
- The open-air museum in Dar es Salaam stages ngoma performances alongside its collection of traditional houses. These are museum-staged, which the museum does not hide, and they are a good introduction precisely because the framing is honest.
Beyond that, the real thing happens at weddings, funerals and community occasions, and it is not something you can buy a ticket for. If you are invited to one, go. Taarab in particular belongs to weddings more than to any stage.
Several events commonly listed as Tanzanian music festivals could not be confirmed to exist. One frequently named music festival has no working web presence at all, and should not be confused with a long-running travel and tourism trade fair in Arusha that shares part of its name. The Zanzibar film festival is a film festival, despite often being listed as a music one.
The hotel cultural show question
Almost every beach hotel and safari lodge in Tanzania puts on a dance performance in the evening, and visitors frequently ask whether it is authentic. It is a fair question and it deserves a better answer than yes or no.
The dancers are usually real dancers performing real repertoire, often well. What is missing is the occasion. A dance that exists to mark an initiation, a harvest or a death is being performed between courses to an audience that will fly home on Thursday, and the thing that made it meaningful is the part that cannot travel. Makonde masked dance in particular belongs to initiation, not to an audience.
So the honest framing is that a hotel show is a performance rather than a ceremony, that this does not make it worthless, and that it is better enjoyed as a concert than consumed as an anthropological encounter. Applaud, pay attention, tip the performers directly, and do not photograph anyone who has not agreed to it. If you want more than that, go to the festival at Bagamoyo, or to a concert at the academy in Stone Town, where the framing is honest and the standard is higher.
The wider culture this music belongs to is covered under Swahili cultural tours, and the instrument-making and carving traditions under craft workshops.
Questions travellers ask
What is the difference between ngoma and a cultural show?
An ngoma is an occasion, and the word covers the drum, the dance and the event together. A cultural show is a performance of the dance without the occasion. The dancing can be excellent in both cases; only one of them is the thing itself.
Where is the best place to hear traditional music?
The arts festival at Bagamoyo in the latter part of the year, for range and standard. The music academy in Stone Town for taarab specifically. Otherwise, a wedding, if you are lucky enough to be invited to one.
When is the Zanzibar music festival?
Its dates have moved and the month is no longer the one most published guides assume, so check the festival's own listing. The venue is also uncertain at present, with the Old Fort under renovation.
Can I learn to play or dance?
Yes. The music academy in Stone Town teaches taarab and other Zanzibari forms, and the arts college at Bagamoyo is the national training institution for traditional performance. Both are teaching institutions rather than tourist attractions, so approach them as such.
Is it all right to photograph or film a performance?
Ask first, every time, and expect that at a ceremony the answer may be no. At a staged performance the answer is usually yes, but the individual dancers are still entitled to decline.
Should I tip the performers?
Yes, and directly rather than through the hotel where you can. It is the most reliable way of making sure the money reaches the people who did the work.
Why do so many groups use electric instruments now?
Partly taste, and partly because many traditional instruments can no longer be made: hunting restrictions cut off the animal materials they required, so amplified instruments have taken their place. The change is practical rather than a loss of interest.