Western Jazz Band Songs of Happiness…!
“TANZANIANmusic of the 70s is like country music in the USA.” This popped into the mind of my Kenyan friend as we looked over the lyrics for this seventeen-song Western Jazz collection. He wasn’t talking about the music itself but, when it comes to the lyrical content of songs, there are definitely some parallels: lots of songs about relationships gone wrong; topics that provide social commentaries on love, infidelity, deceit, poverty, and the strength and determination to overcome.
Western Jazz Band
Image courtesy of John Kitime
What we have here are, indeed, Songs of Happiness, Poison, & Ululation; and if you don’t know what ululation is, it’s that high pitched, extended vocalization trilled with the tongue and uvula (the thing hanging down in the back of your mouth). You hear this around the world in celebrations and times of sorrow and you hear it from Western Jazz in their hit song, Vigelegele, celebrating the great enjoyment people will have when listening to Western Jazz and their saboso style. The very first song starts off with Rosa getting some ‘medicine’ from the traditional doctor that poisons her lover. Other songs call out issues of trust among lovers. In others, wives can’t keep a secret, “bad friends” are talking rubbish, there is no one you can trust and a guy can’t get a break: country music for sure.
For nearly twenty years, Western Jazz Band and Dancing Club delighted East Africans from their home base, the Indian Ocean port city of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The band actually formed in 1959, two years before the end of British administration in Tanganyika. Many of the original band members came from what, at that time, was Western Province and other locations in the west. Formed as a regional association, Western Jazz was both a band and a dancing club. The idea was to give migrants to the city from western Tanzania a place to meet friends, socialize and hear good music, though members were welcomed no matter where they came from.