Shada Band

You may not see her much on television, hear her music on FM radio stations or read about her in newspapers and magazines in Tanzania. But Carola Daniel Amri Kinasha has been quietly influencing Tanzanian afro-fusion since 1987 when became a recording artist after graduating from the University of Dar es Salaam with a degree in international relations and French. Ogova Ondego reports.

Any one who stumbles on Kinasha’s performances is usually mesmerised and held under the spell of her penetrating vocals, rich poetic themes and messages that may easily tempt one into believing that the Arusha-born musician is a politician.

She may be one of the most respected women musicians in Tanzania, but she feels the mass media have let down Afro-fusion musicians in favour of their hip-hop counterparts who are usually referred to as musicians of the new generation.

“Ours is a fusion of local ethnic sounds with contemporary or modern tunes. We are fusing traditional Tanzanian music with modern beats to create world music,” says Kinasha who, with her husband—Athanas Sajulo Lukindo—lead the Shada Band.

One of the pioneers of Afro-fusion in Tanzania, Kinasha says Shada bases her music on “Traditional Tanzanian ngoma.”

But it appears few Tanzanians are listening to this rich music that tackles issues like globalisation, democracy, inequality among nations, loss of identity, history, art, celebration of life, and love using traditional Kiswahili symbolism—due to what might appear as selfishness among media players in Tanzania.

Mass media, particularly radio and television—are manned by people who also double up as managers of various music groups and will not promote the music of groups they have no interest in.

“Another challenge Afro-fusion musicians face,” Kinasha says, “is that if your music is not commercial, DJs do not play it. Even if you take music to them, they do not play it and so we end up not reaching our target. We are not happy. Why should we have to bribe DJs to play our music after struggling to compose and record it? This frustrates us so much.”

This frustration has made musicians of this genre to form an association of Afro-fusion artistes to lobby radios and newspapers. They also plan to hold their own music festivals “at which we will present our music to the public for their judgment between us and the mass media.”

Kinasha says she and her colleagues make timeless music that will be played today, tomorrow and always. “We don’t follow fashions but go with serious themes,” she says of her world music.

Although not feted at home, Kinasha is fairly well known on the circuit of world music and has even won an award besides belonging to Women’s Voices, an international women’s group that draws members from Zimbabwe, Norway, Algeria, Sweden, Russia, and Tanzania. The women meet often, discuss issues and perform their blend of local ethnic sounds and world rhythms across the world together. So far they have toured most Scandinavian and Nordic countries, Mozambique, Angola, and Senegal.

And this exposure appears to have left indelible marks on Kinasha who discusses deep global, political and economic issues as if they were the snow on the cap of Kilimanjaro at whose foothills she was born and lived for 13 years till she left for school in Dar es Salaam.

For instance, at the time of this interview, she was working on an eight song album mainly tackling the effect of globalization on developing nations like Tanzania.

As usual, the album is expected to be in Kiswahili. But two of the songs will be in English “so as to reach out to many more people.”

She says African nations have to be careful with how they lead the privatisation of public bodies (parastatals) in which governments have a stake and other strategic organisations lest they sell their souls to foreigners.

“We have to be careful. Our resources are being disposed off and we could very easily find ourselves being foreigners in our own countries,” she says, sounding more like an activist than as a musician.

Kinasha and her husband and seven other people—four of them now deceased—founded Shada Band in Dar es Salaam.

“Shada is not just a music band but also a family. We began Shada—that means a budding flower in Kiswahili--after thorough research on the more than 120 Tanzanian communities and their various music and more than 70 traditional dances (ngoma),” says Kinasha, adding that “everything we do is based on firm research findings.”

Kinasha performs at Forodhani Gardens, Zanzibar

It is therefore hardly surprising that her work impressed the South Africa-based Maa Africa organisation that presented her an award for “The Project with the Most Impact on the Community” in 2000.

Since beginning research on Tanzanian traditional music, she says, more than 30 other groups are following in the footsteps of Shada and Kinasha says she is thoroughly encouraged by this trend.

Parapanda and Mionzi are two groups that base their work on research. The former are kings of poetry that they put to music while the latter thrive on theatre and dance.

Among the younger generation, one of the artists who appear to be basing her music on sound research is Renee Lamira whose presence on the Tanzanian music scene is beginning to be felt though she has been in the sector for less than two years. Her Ngoma ya kwetu video recently received three nominations in the Channel O Africa Music Video Awards in South Africa while she has twice been nominated for KORA All Africa Music Awards.

Saida Karoli and Praxeda Rweyondela (Maua) have also curved a niche for themselves as folk musicians. Karoli, Rweyondela and Lamira are of the Haya extraction and hail from Bukoba on the border of Tanzania and Uganda. Although Shada is a standing band and family, all members are free to do solo projects. Hence Kinasha’s continued membership in Women’s Voice.

So how and why did Kinasha found Shada?

“At the time of our founding all bands played cover versions, mainly of Congolese music that was quite popular right across Tanzania. Although Tanzanians have a right to listen to Congolese music, we wanted to give them another sound. Hence we began to play our own compositions in order to give listeners a variety of sounds and enable them to choose what they want to listen to. We don’t insist that artistes should have standardised tunes in a country like Tanzania that has numerous communities with numerous tunes,” Kinasha says.

Mother of two children she educates from her music earnings, Kinasha was born of a Meru mother and a Maasai father at Longido on the border of Tanzania and Kenya Kenya, a short distance from Namanga. She lived in the village for 13 years before going to secondary school and university in Dar es Salaam where she eventually married and settled after college graduation.

She may not have planned to get into music, she says, but she found herself dabbling in it after graduation in 1987 upon meeting her future husband with whom she founded Shada. “Our aim was to support myself and help popularise Tanzanian traditional music for posterity,” she says.

Although recording is not as lucrative as some people think, Kinasha says she and her band can never think of becoming a resident band that she describes as ‘extremely difficult’. “It is one of the most difficult jobs one can ever think of. Playing music from 7 pm to 2 am is torture. You have to perform to the demands of clients. Even if you have to play a song 10 times, you will do it because clients demand it. You don’t have to like the music but must satisfy demands of the customer,” she says.

She nevertheless says Shada sometimes perform in clubs although ‘not out of choice’. “If I had a choice, I would like to play for one or two hours only so as to give music lovers quality performances,” says Kinasha who composes, plays guitar, and puts lyrics to melody although she cannot read music notation but “does everything by ear.” Other instruments used by Shada include drums, keyboards, kalimba, zeze, marimba, and litungu.

Like many budding African musicians are wont to do, Kinasha and her husband found themselves in Britain seeking green pastures in the land of Queen Elizabeth II between 1991 and 1997 and discovered that life was more difficult in Britain than in Tanzania. “We spent most of the time working as servants in factories making sausages, washing dishes and serving customers in bars and hotels to put food on the table and pay rent and played very little music,” she says. They often returned home exhausted, tense, and irritable to each other and unable to concentrate on music rehearsal or anything else for that matter as you struggle to survive. “After four years we threw in the towel and returned home to start afresh. We had mistakenly thought we would have a break-through in music much more easily in Britain than in Tanzania. It was an eye-opening experience. We realised we could perform, appreciated and covered in the Press at home. I can’t repeat the mistake now,” Kinasha says.

Kinasha and Shada are now considering collaborating with East African artistes. One of the very first people she would like to work with is Kora award-winning Afro-jazz musician Lydia Achieng Abura. Unlike Zanzibar that has two major perfoimng arts festivals—Festival of the Dhow Countries, and Sauti za Busara-- Tanzania mainland has no music festivals that Kinasha says would help uplift music standards on the mainland. “We would like to work with others in the region,” she says.

Shada’s first album, Shada, had eight songs, six in Kiswahili and two in English. Besides Kinasha and Lukindo, Shada Band comprises guitarist Norman Bikaka, Bass guitarist Moshi Bakuza, drum player Hussein Masimbi and percussionist Omar Ali. Vocalists Godfrey Malunda and Donald Malunda, and Anania Ngoliga on kalimba, marimba and zeze with Lukindo on keyboard complete the Kinasha-led band.

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