Chamwino: Arrival!

           We took the bus, or dala-dala as they call it here, out of Dar es Salaam Sunday morning.  The bus station was frantic.  Our taxi driver helped us to our bus where the conductor thankfully spoke English.  It was just Diane, my friend Chris Mena, and myself.  Our other friends were mostly meeting us there later or catching a bus the next day.  We left Dar at 9 AM, which is 3:00 in Swahili time.  It’s strange.  6 AM is 0:00 to them, and people will use Swahili time interchanged with regular time totally randomly.  Our bus tickets said departure time of 3:00, but we knew better.

The view out of the front of the bus.  Bus conductors just
sit on the middle console, sometimes with a cushion.

A glimpse of the chaos of the Dar bus station.  It's just a ton
of busses in a line and a million people walking around
trying to sell you things or give you a ride. 

            We rode until about half past 12 when our bus stopped in an area called Morogoro.  We got some snacks and found an ATM.  The filling station there had a strange vibe.  Everything was getting very rural and a little more sketchy.   Places that attract a lot of traffic (especially internationals) become kind of targeted.   We got back on the bus and rode for four more hours.  They had a TV on the bus that just played music soap operas and music videos in Swahili.  Chris’s and my favorite was one that depicted a white princess leaving her kingdom because she fell in love with a tribesman. 

The Morogoro filling station.  Some beautiful mountains
in the background.  Some sketchiness in the foreground.

            We were headed towards Chamwino, but there is no bus station there.  We were on a bus going to a larger city called Dodoma, but we were instructed to get off at a specific junction to await a car to pick us up.  We managed to get off at the right place, but our driver was not yet there.  So instead a large group of guys riding motorcycles, or piki-piki, crowded around us trying to give us a ride.  Only one spoke any English and he just kept saying, “Don’t worry, man.  It will be fine.”  He probably shook my hand like fifty times.  That is a big thing here.  He was about my age, I’d say, and probably a little drunk.  The other guys were all just laughing at him as he spoke and stumbled around a bit.  It was like 4 in the afternoon.

This is the van that picked us up from the junction, and also
the van I rode in all week for other village visits.
The driver's name was Jai.

            Our driver arrived with the “CAC” sign for which we were told to be looking.  “CAC” stands for the “Chamwino Arts Center,” which is an organization run by Dr. Kedmon Mapana.  He teaches at U of Dar, but he is from Chamwino and is still active in the community development there.  He is the mastermind behind the whole Wagogo music festival we are attending in Chamwino.  We got in the van and were taken to the CAC building to check in.  Two of the guys from CAC that picked us up were named Nason and Sospeter.  Sospeter is Kedmon’s brother.  Nason speaks English.

Nason is pictured here, greeting guests in front of the CAC.

The sign out in front of the Chamwino Arts Center (CAC).

Narrowly snuck this picture of Sospeter in one of the villages.

A later picture of Nason in front of the CAC building.

            After writing in the guest book at CAC, we were taken to Sampa’s Family Complex guest house.  There are no hotels in Chamwino, but this is the next best thing.  Chamwino is really a small village that has gradually developed into somewhat of a town.  The guest house had tile floor, which is a big statement here.  I have my own room with a full size bed and a good mosquito net!  When we arrived, there was no running water.  We found out that Chamwino only has running water certain days of the week due to water shortages during the dry season.  Things are getting real.

Upon our arrival, Chris and I went to go find some water and
something to drink at a nearby shop, run by these two cute boys.

            We settled in a bit at Sampa’s, and then we walked back over to the CAC building to meet Kedmon.  He took us over to his home for dinner with his family.  Dr. Patricia Campbell of University of Washington was already there, as well as a couple named Keith and Lynn.  They are from Seattle, and they hosted Kedmon and his family for 6 months when he first moved to the U.S. to do his PhD.  They promised to come visit his hometown once he moved back, so here they are.  Keith is a pastor.  Kedmon’s wife, Pendo, was there.  He also has three children.  The food was delicious!  There was rice, meat, greens, and even some fruit!  When they serve meat here, it is usually just a bunch of different chunks of beef in a pot.  This is pretty typical cuisine for all my time so far in the villages.  Greens are a nice luxury, and fruit is very very rare.  It is the dry season in Tanzania, so everyone is conserving some.

            Kedmon has a beautiful home.  He also has tile floors.  He even has a suspended water tank that supplies water pressure even when the public water is off.  Many people have these large black, 2500 liter tanks to carry them through when the water is not on.  This is how our guest house operates.  You just use buckets to shower and wash waste down to the septic tank.  The toilets here are not American, but squatties.  There is quasi-consistent electricity, and really good phone reception!  Chris and I laughed at the irony that I could check my email while having to take a bucket shower.  There is one paved road that runs from town to the junction where we got off the bus.  Otherwise all roads are dirt.  It’s pretty intense out here in Chamwino. 

           After dinner we went out to a nearby village for a special sunset preview performance.  Different groups from all the villages will be performing at the festival later in the week, but from Monday through Wednesday we get to go out into the villages and preview some of the performances in their actual native contexts.  It is a seriously cool opportunity.  Sunday night we just got a super sneak peak.  About a dozen women of the village came out and sang traditional songs.  They also played the muheme drum, which is traditionally an instrument only for females.  Men don't play drums in Wagogo tradition.  The performance in front of the sunset was breath-taking.  Not to be cliche, but the whole time in each village is completely like something you see in some documentary about a far off place.  It is so strange to be there with the dirt actually on your feet.

This girl was cute.

She caught me taking a picture of her.

This is a muheme (moo-heh-meh) drum.  It is surprisingly
lightweight and has the handle carved into it.  I got to
see a cool video of one of these being made.

            So much more to come!  Get ready for lots of pictures of beautiful African children.  Here’s a bonus one, just for reading all this.

Dar es Salaam, Tanzania! Part 2

            So my previous post was just a brief overview of my first few days in Dar.  The day following dinner at Prof Mitch’s university flat was Wednesday.  The main thing that happened that day was a concert in the evening to kick off the symposium.  It was a performance by Prof Gerhad Kubik and an ensemble performing blues/swing music from Malawi.  Kubik is an ethnomusicologist from Vienna that is currently 79 years old.  He is a gifted clarinetist, as well as a celebrity in the field of ethnomusicology.  He has collected so many recordings in his career that he basically has his own archive.  This ensemble in particular also featured one-string bass, where the player just angles a 2x4 piece of wood attached to a box to get different pitches.  Pretty cool!  The concert was in downtown Dar.  It started two hours late because we were stuck in traffic.

Gerhard Kubik delivering his keynote address at the symposium.

80 year-old Kubik shredding clarinet on left, one-string bass on the far right.

            Thursday and Friday were the days of the symposium at U of Dar.  Some of the presentations of the first day were not as impressive as those at the ICTM conference in East London, but I am told that this symposium is meant to be a little more varied in quality/experience.  Even so, some presentations were quite impressive.  My friends Zack and Jocelyn presented again and did great.  Two other students from University of Washington also shared great presentations- David Aarons and Joe Kinzer.  The director of the ethnomusicology program at University of Washington, Prof Dr. Patricia Campbell, also presented.  It made me excited for that school for sure!

Zack and Jocelyn just killing it!

            One really cool presentation was by a professor of ethnomusicology at University of Weimar, Germany and a man from the German Public Radio in Berlin.  They are working on several archive projects, as well as one huge international conglomerate archive online.  They are also developing an application like Shazam or SoundHound where you could identify literally any music played-back or performed around you and the origin of that music.  Seriously cool stuff! 

Another noteworthy presentation was that of Dr. Matt Morin.  He is an alum of Florida State University that did his PhD dissertation on NGOs in Kenya- namely the recording studio we’ll be working with when I go there!  As he was presenting, I connected the name with the face and realized that this was the man whose PhD I had been reading to prepare for our repatriation work.  His paper was literally on my iPhone in iBooks.  I went up to him afterwards to tell him how thankful I am for his work and to encourage him that someone is actually reading it.  It was an awesome moment for both of us, I think!

The conference was in sort of an outdoor lecture space at the university.  As is typical for conferences outside of the U.S., it seems, there were copious amounts of coffee and tea breaks.  Breakfast, lunch and dinner were provided, and the food was amazing.  I was even able to find some free wifi on the campus!  Life was good.

Friday night there was a big choir concert to celebrate the close of the symposium.   It was incredible moment, being blown away by this kwaya, as they spell it in East Africa.  They sounded amazing.  But it also was just quite humbling to acknowledge that I was getting the privilege of listening to an African choir actually in Africa.  One piece was in Zulu (from South Africa) and another in Swahili.  I just reflected on the reality that people all over the world acknowledge African choirs for their beautiful voices and charisma.  It even isn’t that uncommon for them to appear on popular CDs or on television behind a famous artist.  But I was finding them in their home, in the context in which they actually live.  Pretty unreal!

Dr Kedmon Mapana giving some closing remarks at the end
of the choir concert. 

Saturday we had some free time.  We went to a local market called Mwenge where they sell all kinds of little carvings and garbs for souvenirs.  It is obviously a tourist trap, and all the vendors were basically swarming around us to try to get us into their shop.  The most interesting part to me was that one shopkeeper offered to take me into the area behind all the shops where all the items were crafted.  The sight was very much consistent with the sweat shops we imagine in third world countries.  It was all sheet metal shacks and people sitting in the dirt working away at some craft item.  Very eye-opening indeed.  Especially because this market essentially exists due to tourist ignorance and indulgence.

My friend Chris Mena examines the wares of one shop.

This was a rare glimpse into the back of the market where
the carvings and crafts are made.

Caught the shop keepers off guard - all on their phones!

Obama's popularity in Africa is unwavered.  His face is
printed here on a swatch of cloth.

A funny sign in front of a store.  "Have you had dreams about

natural fruits?  Well here is where you can fulfill your dreams."

For dinner we went to a restaurant at a beach resort called Seacliff.  Next to the hotel I found a phone shop where I bought two Tanzanian SIM cards- one for my iPhone and one for my laptop to use internet.  That’s how I’m able to post this currently.  5 GB of data was 28,000 Tanzanian shilling, which comes out to about $16 USD.  The exchange rate here is 1680 TZS to $1 USD.  Pretty crazy!

Matt Morin and Prof Mitch over dinner.

Even as I type this, I cringe a little bit with the irony of going straight from the poverty-stricken market to the beach resort for dinner.  This polarization keeps popping up in my travels in Africa.  It particularly seems to pertain to the privileged few that can live in wealth and then go witness the poor.  It almost feels like a sick form of tourism.  It's interesting traveling with ethnomusicologists too, because they are very aware of the potential negative impacts of transcultural interaction.  Yet they are human too, and sometimes seem to participate in the perpetuation of this cycle.  It is hard to judge, because I know I do too!  This is my sermon for this post.  

Sunday we checked out of our room at Uplands Centre and rode the bus from Dar es Salaam to the village of Chamwino.  So much more to come!

Dar es Salaam, Tanzania! Part 1

After a successful flight from Port Elizabeth to Johannesburg to Dar, we arrived at about 5 AM local time.  Dr. Kedmon Mapana, a lecturer at University of Dar, picked us up from the airport.  He has organized the conference and festival I’m going to here in Tanzania, so remember that name!  He was born in a village in Tanzania, was a leader in the local singing/dance traditions, was invited by multiple institutions in Europe and the United States to come lead workshops and master classes, and eventually did his PhD at Seattle Pacific University.  This is how a few of my close friends here got involved with the music festival in Chamwino we’ll be attending later.  He is really a remarkable person, and one of few that has both the perspective of the third-world, impoverished villages of Tanzania and the perspective of American first-world life.  He arranged all local transport, lodging, food, and all kinds of random other commodities for us. 

Dr Kedmon Mapana presenting his research at the symposium.

Anyway!  He picked us up at the airport and drove us to our hotel where we were staying.  The traffic in Dar es Salaam is quite a sight.  Even at 5 in the morning, traffic was a deadlock for large portions of the “downtown area.”  The reality is that the infrastructure here is in no way capable of managing the explosive population.  Lanes are generally irrelevant and pedestrians and motorbikes are at their own risk.  This is much different than South Africa.

The hotel where we stayed was Uplands Centre.  The campus of University of Dar is northwest out of town, and the hotel is just on the perimeter of the campus.  It was quite an interesting place.  It is a pretty large structure, considering most of Dar is sheet metal shacks.  But it was rather unkempt and reminded me of something out of Jurassic Park or something.  It looks like it was once a really nice place, but is now well into disrepair.  The staff is essentially four or five students from U of Dar- also a strange thing to see.  There were no owners or adults coming to check on the place the entire time.  We are a pretty large group of Americans/Europeans, and usually business owners here are excited to cater to us very well to hopefully make lots of money.  These students were very nice, but obviously just operating at par for the course.

An outdoor view of Uplands from the overgrown back lawn.

This is the outdoor eating area of Uplands.

The entire backside of the building was unfinished, with no
progress coming any time soon.

Random rustic equipment behind the hotel.

Guest rooms.

Interior shot of the courtyard.

            As we arrived at 5 or 6 now, we were guided to a room that they had intended for Diane and I to share.   I was definitely glad when she spoke up and said that would not work.  I was prepared for the worst. Haha  But then they walked me to another room in which a student volunteer named George was staying.  It had two small beds, a tiny television, and a shared bathroom with a room across from us.  There were good mosquito nets and sheets provided.  I could very well tell I was no longer in South Africa, but this place was not bad.  There was a hot water heater mounted in our bathroom that you had to turn on to use each time, but every shower I took was cold anyway.  When I got there, I was just happy to lie down and sleep for 5 hours.

George (right) just graduated from U of Dar with a degree
in acting.  He helped organize the conference.

I woke up the same day and met up with Zack and Jocelyn (from Seattle) as well as many others from the upcoming conference.  We had an incredible meal at a large restaurant on campus.  There is a lot of rice served here, and it is always so tasty.  We went back to Uplands for a bit and I did all of my laundry with a bucket in the shower.  I hung it up across one of my hammock straps outside to dry.  We got picked up again to go have dinner at another professor’s home.  His name is Mitch and he just finished his contract at U of Dar.  He was director there for a number of years.  He also is the organizer for the whole conference on music education in Zanzibar which I will be attending.

Dr. Kedmon Mapana and Prof Mitch

Diane trying to get internet at Uplands by tethering off of
a student worker's cell phone.

Laundry getting SO dry.

Some typical Tanzania cuisine.  Rice, fish, greens, and
Coca-Cola with TZ grown cane sugar.  

Dar is a really interesting place.  Unfortunately where we were staying near the campus of the university is far removed from the actual city, and I haven’t gotten to totally walk around and explore to my heart’s content.  But then again, walking around is rather dangerous with all the traffic.  This post is just leading up to the conference that took place in Dar!  Part 2 to come!

Grahamstown!

For the past week I have had the pleasure of residing in Grahamstown, South Africa!  This is the home of Rhodes University, a prestigious school of about 7,000 students.  The International Library of African Music is based out of the Humanities department of Rhodes, but it is in its own building.  This is where I’ve been working each morning for the past week. 

Diane speaking to some guests at ILAM

Professor Diane Thram (she insists I call her Diane) and I have been doing all kinds of things this week preparing for our trip to Tanzania and then Kenya.  Among these, we’ve been packing equipment, packing ILAM merchandise, and reviewing field notes and recordings from both Tanzania and Kenya that are dated from 1950!  Super cool!  They are some of the only recordings that exist of these traditions and people groups, done by Hugh Tracey- the original ethnomusicology rockstar.  The recordings are of surprisingly good quality, and I’ve been really enjoying talking to different people at ILAM about Hugh Tracey’s recording practices.  He played no games with his recordings!  They would run immense lengths of cable just to park the generator as far away as possible so it did not bleed into the recording.  He also had a team of experts that would operate the recording equipment in a nearby truck while he personally held the microphone.  What a boss!

Elijah giving a tour of the studio

Meanwhile, ILAM has an impressive recording studio, in which they have state of the art equipment with which they have digitized all of Hugh Tracey’s work!  Whoa!  They are one of the only archives in the world to have such a wealth of information that is pioneer, incredible quality, and ALL digitized.  It is staggering.  The guy in charge of the studio is Elijah Madiba, and he is the MAN.  We’ve spent a lot of time together this week.  He is the brains behind any technical stuff at ILAM- aka I would love to BE him.  I’ve been picking his brain on gear, music, Grahamstown, and just the universe in general. 

SA Drummer, Louis Moholo-Moholo performs.  On the right
was a jazz cellist playing a 5 string cello!

The National Arts Festival has also been going on all week in G-town.  For those of you from Jacksonville, imagine a city that is about a 20^th of the size of Jax having a festival that is twice the size of OneSpark.  It feels a lot like OneSpark, but it also brings in lots of international acts.  I’ve been to art galleries, plays, traditional dance performances, string quartets, pianists, and lots of South African Jazz!  I saw Maria Schneider Big Band (Grammy Award winning AMERICAN big band composer) for less than $10.  Definitely would never get to do that in the states.  They also have a massive Village Green filled with tents and vendors.  It was such a cool experience! 

The main building of Rhodes University

Grahamstown in general is a very beautiful city.  It was settled in 1820, and many of its buildings are reminiscent of English colonialism.  Interestingly, some areas of it look a lot like New Orleans, LA.  Instead of having tall dorm buildings, Rhodes has beautiful small “Rez”s that all look historic.  I’ve been told there are more than 50 Rez halls.  I’ve been staying in one called the Salisbury House that used to be part of an old school for nuns!   The dining hall in which I eat breakfast is called Allen Webb Hall, and it looks like it is out of Hogwarts.  The Rhodes Chapel is also right next to my Rez and is all brick inside with a breath-taking painting that was done by a nun above the stage.  I love it so much!

An exhibition of "hand-spring" puppets.  Two guys stand
inside the horse to manipulate it.

Just some random street at Rhodes.

Salisbury House!

Allen Webb Hall, my Rez's dining hall

Inside the Rhodes Chapel

A parade on High St for the festival.  

There are plenty of great places to eat or get good coffee.  Just off of campus there were two major streets full of cool local places- High Street and New Street.  At the top of the hill outside of town there is The Monument, which is both beautiful and a vibrant hub of the festival.  Downtown there was the incredible St. Michael’s Cathedral, which was so picturesque that I think I snapped it every time I passed.  The Jazz Hub was a little ways northwest and it looked like a residential area in Boston.  Despite the cold weather and my sickness, I walked far and wide across this town!

Town Hall is the building on the left, with lots
of vendors out front.

I also met lots of cool people!  In order to unlock the front doors at the Rezes, students must use their fingerprint- kind of cool to see a fingerprint scanner on some of these historic doors!  Well since there are so many guests in the Rezes, some students were employed to stay over their winter break to just be doormen.   There are three at my Rez, and my favorite is a girl named Tando.  She is going into her fourth year at Rhodes as a triple major in Industrial Sociology, Industrial Psychology, and Anthropology!  And I thought I was cool!  I also met a photographer for a local paper, multiple vendors from the Green, and countless other nice strangers!  I spent a lot of time exploring with Zach and Jocelyn (couple from Seattle), and also got to have dinner with Mandy Carver and her husband Christian.  She presented at the conference in East London about her grade-school text book/curriculum to help teachers instruct about African traditional music, and her husband runs African Musical Instruments.  One of my favorite people I got to spend time with is Andrew Tracey, the son of Hugh Tracey- the man that created ILAM.  Andrew is recently retired, but still very active with ILAM and is a joy to be around.  Such and honor to have met this figure in history!

Left to Right: Dave Dargie (UFH),
Diane Thram (ILAM), Christian Carver (AMI),
Andrew Tracey

I know this post is long, but Grahamstown has been good to me and I will miss it so much!  Today we drive to Port Elizabeth, fly through Johannesburg, and then arrive next day in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania!  It’s hard to say goodbye to South Africa so soon, but hopefully it won’t be for good!

St Michael's Cathedral.