Zanzibar!

Prof Mitch Strumpf with other leaders form DCMA

      We left Dar and flew to Zanzibar for the next leg of our trip.  In an earlier post I made reference to a Professor Mitch Strumpf.  He just recently ended his contract at University of Dar and has been hired at an institution in Zanzibar!  It is called the Dhow Countries Music Academy, and it focuses on training young musicians in both western music as well as the genre of Taarab that is prevalent in Zanzibar due to Arab influence.  One of his first projects was to organize a conference of all the music educators in Tanzania to discuss the use of traditional musics in the classroom.  Diane was asked to come present at this conference because the International Library of African Music is constantly looking to develop new educational materials out of the historic recordings of Hugh Tracey.

Prof Frank Gunderson, director of Ethnomusicology at FSU,
did his entire 45 minute talk about the history of Tanzanian
popular music IN SWAHILI.  No translator.  Very well done.

      Upon arrival, we encountered the celebration of Eid (the end of Ramadan) to still be in full swing in Zanzibar.  It can sometimes go on for a couple of days, or occur on different days in different countries.  In Zanzibar, they choose to celebrate it for four days total.  Our cab driver had to park quite a ways away from our lodge due to the traffic.
      The lodge where I stayed is called St. Monica's Lodge.  It is in the heart of a very historic district of Stone Town, which is the town on the island where we stayed.  The lodge itself is a pair of old buildings that were formerly the site of a major slave market in Zanzibar.  The chambers still sit on the bottom floor of one of the lodge complexes.  My friends and I went and explored them the first night we were there.  Pretty crazy!

Welcome to St. Monica's!  The sign for the tours.

Full view of the outside of the St. Monica's Lodge.

The rooms backed up to a joint balcony that
was quite beautiful in the mornings

A photo of the historic Anglican cathedral behind St. Monica's.
It had scaffolding for construction, but still was quite exquisite.
On Sunday, I could hear the choir from outside in the street.

     I had been told that Zanzibar is quite touristy and westernized.  I must say that is was still much different than I expected.  The buildings of Stone Town all looked as though they were built prior to the 20th century.  It's almost like St. Augustine, FL in some ways.  But the buildings are all right next to each other, forming these narrow alleys for roads.  Getting around is so tricky!  I had a decent map and GPS on my phone, but the roads have no names and some roads are not on the map.  Quite an adventure!

Spotted a monkey that had just been for a dip in the channel.

A look out at the waterfront market place in Stone Town.

Lots of pretty colonial style buildings!

We saw a bunch of tourists looking up.  Upon scrutiny, we found
there to be a network of about a dozen hand and foot-sized spiders.
Just in the middle of a popular street-alley.

Powerlines are almost all exposed on these old buildings!
They made for some crazy knots and messes above the alleyways.

Fact:  Freddie Mercury, lead-singer of popular rock band Queen,
was born in Stone Town!  Multiple tourist shops claim to be the site
of his actual home.  The more you know.

Nice shot of what the street-alleys look like in Stone Town!
They are too small for cars, and only some of them are published on maps.
It was pretty fun learning to navigate these.

       The conference went quite well.  I think the educators really had some great conversation about strategies they could use to improve their classroom music lessons.  Unfortunately, all the discussions were in Swahili.  We had a translator sitting by us, but it was still difficult to keep track.  I spent some of the workshop time slots just wandering around Zanzibar with Zack and Jocelyn.  Zanzibar was the last stop the three of us had in common before departing for Zimbabwe and Kenya, so I tried to maximize on our time together.  The next time I'll see them will probably just have to be in Seattle.  But now I have lots of cool people to go see or stay with there!

My final parting with my friends Zack and Jocelyn!
Missing them so much!

Sitting in the back of the conference with our own translator.
That is Diane (left) and Prof Patricia Campbell, director of
Ethnomusicology at Univ of Washington in Seattle.  I've been
traveling with her for the past couple of weeks also.

In between conference sessions, we would step out on
this beautiful balcony that overlooked the water.  Patricia
was just posing too hard to not get photographed!

Per usual, there were lots of coffee breaks.  Here they also served
coffee cake as well as samosas (pictured right).  They are like triangular
egg rolls with ground beef or vegetables in them.  Very good!

This is my friend Gyaviri! He just graduated from U of Dar with
a music degree and is about to go study in Finland
to learn about the role of the arts in social development!
He ran tech stuff at the conference in Dar as well as here in Zanzibar.

      One of the highlights of our time in Zanzibar was that Diane got to present 25 copies of Hugh Tracey's original recordings from there in 1950.  He documented the Taarab music of the time.  The artistic director of DCMA, Motena, listened through some of the recordings in front of the whole conference and spoke about the significance of each.  They were so elated to get these recordings, as it was an era of music and culture in Zanzibar that was relatively undocumented.  This is the real "repatriation" of these archived recordings that is the purpose of our entire trip.  It was quite rewarding for Diane, and got me excited for the repatriation work to come in Kenya!

Diane proudly passing off the copies of Hugh Tracey's Zanzibar
recordings from 1950 to the art directors of DCMA.  Metona, pictured left,
went through multiple recordings, discussing their historical significance
to the genre of Taarab music.

     Speaking of Kenya, I'm here!  We've already completed one week of field work, and I can't wait to talk about it more!  Coming soon!

Single-prop plane selfie!

View of the cockpit from my seat.  The pilot's girlfriend napped
in the copilot seat.  Wish my roommate Kevin Barth was flying me!

Kind of a sweet moment.  Little baby arm landed on my lap
for most of the flight.  The mom sitting next to me was flying
with her three toddler children.  Bless her.

A final parting shot of the boats sitting in the Zanzibar channel.