Will Baxley Records Africa!: Chamwino: Village Visits

I left off with my arrival in Chamwino on Sunday, July 22^nd. I am over a week behind on posts, unfortunately! But I’ve been moving around a lot, and when I was in Chamwino, I actually had basically no internet access. So time to catch you all up, as I sit in my lodge in Zanzibar!

Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday held some of the most unique experiences I think I will ever have in my whole life. The reason we were in Chamwino was for a large music festival celebrating the music of the Wagogo people. Chamwino is a large, centralized village/town filled with lots of Wagogo people. But it is only since the 1970s that Tanzania has begun to form villages like this. Formerly all the people of a particular tribe or people-group would just be scattered all over the countryside. Chamwino was actually one of the first attempts by the government to establish a central village for all the smaller rural clusters to use as a place of convergence. What this means is that there are still lots of people out in very isolated, rural areas. These rural people gather each year to present their music performing groups. But the festival didn’t start until Friday. As honored guests of Dr. Kedmon Mapana (a Wagogo from this area), we got to go out into the rural villages to preview some of the top groups coming to the festival.

In the field of ethnomusicology, the term “context” is brought up a lot. Ethnomusicologists are very sensitive about music having a specific effect in its original context that may not be replicable in another setting. That being said, getting to see the music groups perform in their actual hometowns is an incredible privilege that helps us to see a little bit more clearly what this music looks like in its original context. I must still admit that some of the songs performed are dedicated to specific ceremonies and rites, and their performance for us would thus still fall short of the completely original context. But being in the village was very special in comparison to seeing them on stage in Chamwino later in the week.

As we arrived, we could hear from inside the car
the women already playing muheme

Monday we drove the furthest out. We at breakfast in the first village we visited after a performance by the musicians of that area. It was a little strange, but they served us before they served the performers. This happened constantly during my time in rural Tanzania, but Kedmon insists that this is a part of the culture- it brings the people joy to put us first.

The music of the Wagogo people is world famous for its instrumentation and polyphonic singing (more than one voice at a time, in harmony). Ironically, a word for “music” does not exist in Chigogo, the Gogo language. Instead they have the term ngoma, which refers to the music, dance, and acting that all goes into each performance.

The last song incorporated kicking around this handwoven
basket and running around the group. We all got the
basket kicked to us before we left.

The first day we saw two different villages’ ngoma. One of those villages even told us that it was the first time they had ever had a muzungu in their village (white person). So crazy! On the first day there were only 8 of us in total, and it felt so special. We really felt like guests in each village. At the end of both performances, Kedmon would initiate a song with the people and we would all get up and dance together. It was unreal. Kedmon knows these people so well, and they obviously love him and trust him enough to let him bring these crazy muzungu to their village.

The instrumentalists of the second village, Songambele.
The group is called Faru, and they were one of my favorites.

A random girl walked up to Kedmon during the performance
and he just scooped her up into his lap.

The Faru group after performing.

A member of Faru that asked me to take her picture.

The first group on Tuesday was the Ndagwa group from
Msangwa village. This little girl was unreal.

The second day more of our colleagues arrived, and there were about 24 of us. There was a totally different feel to traveling with a group of this size. The first day, other villagers still seemed to stare and be in awe, but the second and third day it was even more so. The interactions in each village were much less personal, but we did still dance at the end of each visit. This just demonstrates how great Kedmon is- being able to bring us all together so well and put the villagers at ease. After going to three villages on Tuesday, we also went and visited a church in the nearby city of Dodoma. There is a kwaya (choir) there that performs both gospel and Gogo music. Except instead of the traditional instruments, there was keyboard, guitars, and even a trumpet!

The fellas of Ndagwa, dancing with flattened cans filled
with hard beans or maize. They sound like shakers.

The Muhubiri group performs in Matembe village. Incredible
mountains behind the villagers watching muzungu watch ngoma.

Diane got a cool shot of the villagers scoping us out.

Lots of the performances were inside village church buildings,
and villagers would line the outside to watch.

These are the most typical houses of the Wagogo people.

My friends goat intestine (left) and
goat stomach. They taste like regular
goat meat, but the stomach was pretty chewy.

Wednesday we went to one last village to see the famous Nyota group. They are consistently some of the top performers in the region. We were not let down by their stellar performance. I will say that because of the fame of this group, they did not seem quite as warm and inviting as some of the others. They seem to be aware of the profitable nature of their ngoma, and slightly distrusting. Kedmon, in his infinite poise, put them at ease, and we still had a great time with the people. It was in this village that I got to try goat intestine, goat stomach, and ugimbe- the local beer made from honey.