Tanzania 1955 | 2 Hours of Vintage Village Chorus, Thumb Piano and Deep Drums

🌍 Country 174 of 197 | The 1955 Series | Around This Dot 1955 Tanzania, which in that year was still two places: Tanganyika on the mainland, administered by Britain as a trust territory, and the protectorate of Zanzibar offshore under its own sultan. Two and a half hours of music as it might have sounded there in 1955, across four suites: the solo songs of the dry plateau; the plucked iron tongues and the winnowing tray; the standing ring and the deep drum; and a closing pair leading into the Pan-Tanzania Inter-Region Folk Extended Suite. CHAPTERS 0:00 Suite I: Songs of the Dry Plateau A woman walks home alone across open thorn country in the last of the light, singing without words in phrases so long there is no beat under them, the voice sent out level so it carries a long way over flat ground. Beside it a stool outside a low round house in the shade of the eaves at the hottest part of the day, an old man singing at the very bottom of his range while two women hold one thin high tone above him. Closes with the Songs of the Dry Plateau Extended Suite. 43:27 Suite II: The Tongues and the Winnowing Tray Two thumbs work a wide flat soundboard set with a row of hammered iron tongues, small metal rings buzzing along its edge, the figure coming round and round without ever developing while the heaviest low tongue is taken again on every turn so it never dies away, and underneath it a wide shallow basket of grain is shaken steadily so a dry hiss runs under everything. Then a single thick string running the length of a stick with a dried gourd bound beneath it, plucked under one held chord. Closes with The Tongues and the Winnowing Tray Extended Suite. 1:12:49 Suite III: The Standing Ring and the Drum A body of men stands in a close ring on bare ground at dusk, each of them driving a low tone out from far back in the throat in a slow steady surge so that together they make one continuous heaving bass that never lifts, no drum anywhere and nothing struck, while a single voice rides high above it. Then the drum: a tall single-headed drum cut from a hollowed log, struck once off centre and left to die away, over a stick drawn back and forth along the ridges of a dried gourd. Closes with The Standing Ring and the Drum Extended Suite. 1:49:53 Suite IV: Heritage and Inter-Region A large group stands loosely together on swept ground in front of the houses, all carrying one long sustained line, while one voice and then another peels off it into a branch of its own, running above or below the rest for a while and slipping back in with no signal given. Then two players face one another with tongue boards, one laying down the bones of a short cycle and the other dropping notes into the gaps. Closes with the Pan-Tanzania Inter-Region Folk Extended Suite. ABOUT 1955 In 1955 what is now Tanzania was two places. The mainland was Tanganyika, administered by Britain as a United Nations trust territory, with Sir Edward Twining as governor and a population of roughly eight and a half million in a territory the size of France and Germany together. Offshore, Zanzibar and Pemba formed a British protectorate under Sultan Khalifa bin Harub, who had reigned since 1911. The two would not unite until 1964. On the mainland the political temperature was rising: in July 1955 the Tanganyika African National Union was founded, and its leader appeared before the United Nations Trusteeship Council to argue for a timetable to independence, which came in 1961. Sisal was the mainland's great export and the islands lived on cloves. Most people farmed or herded, and the country held well over a hundred distinct peoples and languages with no single one dominant. The music heard here belongs to the interior of that world. ABOUT THE SERIES Around This Dot is a journey around our planet through sound. The 1955 Series visits every country on Earth, one country at a time, capturing the music a listener might have heard there in 1955. From Afghanistan to Zimbabwe, 197 countries in total. DISCLOSURE Music composed by AI and audio performed by AI based on detailed historical and ethnomusicological prompts. These are approximations of regional traditions, not authentic recordings. Two things are worth naming. The urban orchestral song of the island city was the most recorded music of this region in the period and is not rendered here, because it belongs to an orchestra rather than to the villages this series is trying to hear. And initiation and spirit repertory, which is a large part of the musical life of many of these communities, is described and left alone rather than approximated, since this series does not render ritual material anywhere. Created for educational and ambient listening purposes. #Tanzania #Tanganyika #Zanzibar #EastAfrica #VillageChorus #ThumbPiano #Drums #FolkMusic #1950s #AmbientMusic #WorldMusic #AroundThisDot