Enigmatic performer of taarab music and one of the first Zanzibari women to sing in public
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| Bi Kidude |
The Zanzibari singer Bi Kidude (Kiswahili for "Little Granny"), who has died at the age of around 102, had a haunting voice and enigmatic stage presence.
In the last 30 years she came to be widely recognised as one of the
finest musicians from an island famous for spices and open to influences
from the east.
She grew up in the village of Mfagimaringo, where her father was a coconut seller: of her age, she said, "I cannot say that I know it myself, but my birth was at the time of the rupee." The Indian currency was used in east Africa up to the first world war, and a near-contemporary calculated that Bi Kidude was born around 1910.
Along with the pioneering teenager Siti binti Saad (1880-1950), Bi Kidude was one of the first Zanzibari women to lift the veil and sing in public. This was a courageous move in a society where women were confined to purdah. The two were the first female communicators on the island and in mainland Tanzania, of which Zanzibar is now part.
Their original music was dumbak, based on a drum rhythm and performed in small groups. This was blended with an early form of taarab, an Arab/Swahili fusion introduced to Zanzibar in the early 1900s. Taarab combines violins, flutes and Arabic instruments including the zither-like kanoon and the oud, the ancestor of the lute, with a variety of African drums.
There are several taarab variants throughout Kiswahili-speaking east Africa. The Zanzibar style owes most to Egyptian firquah orchestras of the 1930s, but prior to that the Indian influence was more pronounced.
The women's messages were provocative, often ridiculing men's sexual behaviour and sometimes decrying the abuse of women. In 1928, Saad travelled to Bombay to make some of the earliest recordings by an African artist. Bi Kidude set out in the other direction, starting a marathon tour of east Africa. She travelled to the mainland by dhow and moved around occasionally by train, but mostly on foot. Her repertoire was based on Saad's songs, adapted and embellished to fit her own purposes.
Following this journey of personal liberation, Bi Kidude returned home. She married but was unable to conceive and was divorced by two husbands. Then she moved into a small clay house in the Shangani quarter of Zanzibar town. She went to small taarab social clubs, usually run by women and, most importantly, became involved in unyago, the initiation procedure for Swahili women.
The ritual washing and the social and sexual education that follow a girl's first menstruation are accompanied by traditional songs, drumming and dancing. This drumming ceremony is one of the rare occasions where African women play instruments. The unyago women discuss with their charges many issues that are otherwise taboo in African society. The climax of unyago ritual is the wedding, a colourful event at which Bi Kidude and her friends would play their drums and sing provocative songs to an audience of hundreds of women. She helped initiate so many girls over the years that she acquired the nickname that became her trademark.
Bi Kidude also made and applied wanja, a black cosmetic which, combined with henna, is used to paint elaborate designs on the arms and legs of young women. She was also a practitioner of herbal medicine, producing remedies on request for doctors at the local hospital.
Her singing career lay dormant for almost 50 years, but in the 1980s there was a revival of interest in her music when she performed with the Sahib El-Ahri band. Later, she joined the Zanzibar-based group the Twinkling Stars and toured Germany, Scandinavia, Japan and the Gulf.
In the early 1990s she was recruited as an occasional member of Shikamoo Jazz, a band of elderly musicians from Dar es Salaam who were sponsored by the British organisation HelpAge International. This collaboration created a unique development of pop/taarab which saw mixed couples dancing socially to what had been a formal and constrained music. A tour of Britain in 1995 took in the Womad festival at Reading, where Bi Kidude was a major attraction. Her deep, wailing voice expressed the raw emotion of a lifetime's experience.
In 2005 she won a Womex (World Music Expo) award, and the following year the documentary As Old As My Tongue: The Myth and Life of Bi Kidude was released. She continued to perform until recently.
• Bi Kidude (Fatuma binti Baraka), singer, born around 1910; died 17 April 2013
She grew up in the village of Mfagimaringo, where her father was a coconut seller: of her age, she said, "I cannot say that I know it myself, but my birth was at the time of the rupee." The Indian currency was used in east Africa up to the first world war, and a near-contemporary calculated that Bi Kidude was born around 1910.
Along with the pioneering teenager Siti binti Saad (1880-1950), Bi Kidude was one of the first Zanzibari women to lift the veil and sing in public. This was a courageous move in a society where women were confined to purdah. The two were the first female communicators on the island and in mainland Tanzania, of which Zanzibar is now part.
Their original music was dumbak, based on a drum rhythm and performed in small groups. This was blended with an early form of taarab, an Arab/Swahili fusion introduced to Zanzibar in the early 1900s. Taarab combines violins, flutes and Arabic instruments including the zither-like kanoon and the oud, the ancestor of the lute, with a variety of African drums.
There are several taarab variants throughout Kiswahili-speaking east Africa. The Zanzibar style owes most to Egyptian firquah orchestras of the 1930s, but prior to that the Indian influence was more pronounced.
The women's messages were provocative, often ridiculing men's sexual behaviour and sometimes decrying the abuse of women. In 1928, Saad travelled to Bombay to make some of the earliest recordings by an African artist. Bi Kidude set out in the other direction, starting a marathon tour of east Africa. She travelled to the mainland by dhow and moved around occasionally by train, but mostly on foot. Her repertoire was based on Saad's songs, adapted and embellished to fit her own purposes.
Following this journey of personal liberation, Bi Kidude returned home. She married but was unable to conceive and was divorced by two husbands. Then she moved into a small clay house in the Shangani quarter of Zanzibar town. She went to small taarab social clubs, usually run by women and, most importantly, became involved in unyago, the initiation procedure for Swahili women.
The ritual washing and the social and sexual education that follow a girl's first menstruation are accompanied by traditional songs, drumming and dancing. This drumming ceremony is one of the rare occasions where African women play instruments. The unyago women discuss with their charges many issues that are otherwise taboo in African society. The climax of unyago ritual is the wedding, a colourful event at which Bi Kidude and her friends would play their drums and sing provocative songs to an audience of hundreds of women. She helped initiate so many girls over the years that she acquired the nickname that became her trademark.
Bi Kidude also made and applied wanja, a black cosmetic which, combined with henna, is used to paint elaborate designs on the arms and legs of young women. She was also a practitioner of herbal medicine, producing remedies on request for doctors at the local hospital.
Her singing career lay dormant for almost 50 years, but in the 1980s there was a revival of interest in her music when she performed with the Sahib El-Ahri band. Later, she joined the Zanzibar-based group the Twinkling Stars and toured Germany, Scandinavia, Japan and the Gulf.
In the early 1990s she was recruited as an occasional member of Shikamoo Jazz, a band of elderly musicians from Dar es Salaam who were sponsored by the British organisation HelpAge International. This collaboration created a unique development of pop/taarab which saw mixed couples dancing socially to what had been a formal and constrained music. A tour of Britain in 1995 took in the Womad festival at Reading, where Bi Kidude was a major attraction. Her deep, wailing voice expressed the raw emotion of a lifetime's experience.
She
never consciously composed new songs. All her material was based on a
limited number of Saad's compositions, around which she improvised so
liberally that they became her own. However, in later years she would
confuse and combine the material, so that members of the band would need
to skip adroitly from one tune to another at any moment. Though she
made some recordings, her output was not great.
A
small, frail-looking woman, Bi Kidude had enormous stamina and a rugged
sense of humour. In Zanzibar she lived in a modest breeze-block house
with some of her "grandchildren" and their pigeons. Each Saturday she
would perform with the Twinkling Stars at one of the luxury hotels.In 2005 she won a Womex (World Music Expo) award, and the following year the documentary As Old As My Tongue: The Myth and Life of Bi Kidude was released. She continued to perform until recently.
• Bi Kidude (Fatuma binti Baraka), singer, born around 1910; died 17 April 2013
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