"It's just no fun anymore": Women's experiences of Taarab before and after the 1964 Zanzibar revolution

International Journal of African Historical Studies

Volumn 35, Issue 1, 2002, Pages 61-81

  Fair, Laura ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 33846489335     PISSN: 03617882     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/3097366     Document Type: Review

References (107)

1. Kelly Askew, "Performing the Nation: Swahili Musical Performance and the Production of Tanzanian National Culture" (Ph.D. thesis, Harvard University, 1997), 148-51
2. Jan Knappert, "Swahili Tarabu Songs," Afrikaund Ubersee 66, 1 (1977), 116-55
3. S. Sadie, ed., The New Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians (London, 1980), 18:569
4. Janet Topp Fargion, "The Role of Women in Taarab in Zanzibar: An Historical Examination of a Process of 'Africanization,'" The World of Music 35, 2 (1993), 109-125
5. Issa Mgana, Jukwaa la Taarab Zanzibar (Helsinki, 1991), 6-8
6. M.S. Khatib, Taarab Zanzibar (Dar es Salaam, 1992), 28-30
7. Eileen Green, Sandra Hebron, and Diana Woodward, Women's Leisure, What Leisure? (Houndsmills, 1990), 5-6
8. S. M. Shaw, "The Meaning of Leisure in Everyday Life," Leisure Sciences 7, 1 (1985), 1-24
9. Nicole Samuel, "Introduction," in Nicole Samuel, ed., Women, Leisure and the Family in Contemporary Society: A Multinational Perspective (Willingford, 1996), 1-14
10. Laura Fair, Pastimes and Politics: Culture, Community and Identity in Post-abolition Urban Zanzibar, 1890-1945 (Athens, Ohio, 2001), Chs. 1 and 4
11. Eileen Green, "Women Doing Friendship: An Analysis of Women's Leisure as a Site of Identity Construction, Empowerment, and Resistance," Leisure Studies 17 (1998), 171-85
12. Green et.al., Women's Leisure, 143-46
13. Interviews 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 9, 12, 13, 14, 17, 18, 19
14. Esmond Martin, Zanzibar: Tradition and Revolution (London, 1978)
15. Anthony Clayton, The Zanzibar Revolution and Its Aftermath (Hamden, Conn., 1981)
16. Khatib, Taarab Zanzibar, 55-67
17. Mgana, Jukwaa, 10-11
18. Seif Salim Saleh, "Nyimbo za Taarab Unguja," Lugha Yetu 37 (1983), 44-45
19. Interviews 1, 5, 14, 15, 16
20. See also Gary Burgess, "Cinema, Bell Bottoms, and Miniskirts: Struggles over Youth and Citizenship in Revolutionary Zanzibar," forthcoming in the next issue of this journal (International Journal of African Historical Studies 35, 2, 2002)
21. Interviews 1, 4, 5, 6, 14
22. See Askew, "Performing the Nation" for an intricate analysis of similar policies in mainland Tanzania
23. Interviewees 8 and 16 were among the first women recruited to join Culture, in 1965 and 1966. Both were active ASP supporters and neither had been involved in taarab prior to the revolution
24. Kathy Peiss, Cheap Amusements: Leisure in Turn-of-the-Century New York (Philadelphia, 1986), 3-6, 34-76
25. E. P. Thompson, "Time, Work-Discipline and Industrial Capitalism," Past and Present 38 (1967), 56-97
26. Charles Ambler, "The History of Leisure in Colonial Urban Africa," paper presented at a Conference on Africa's Urban Past, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, 19-21 June, 1996, 2-9
27. Phyllis Martin, Leisure and Society in Colonial Brazzaville (Cambridge, 1995), 3-8
28. E.E Evans-Pritchard "Nuer Time-reckoning," Africa 12, 2 (1939), 189-216
29. Karla Henderson, A Leisure of One's Own: a Feminist Perspective on Women's Leisure (State College, Penn., 1989)
30. Interview, 18
31. Interview 9. Also 3, 6, 12, 14
32. Interview 6
33. Interviews, 1, 3, 4, 6, 7, 9, 12, 13
34. Interview 18
35. Men interviewed in Zanzibar about their experiences playing football made similar remarks, defining the time they spent playing with their neighborhood teams as leisure time, while many defined playing with teams sponsored by employers as work. Fair, Pastimes and Politics, Chap. 5
36. Interviews 1, 5, 6, 10, 12, 13, 19
37. Interview 13
38. Interview 3
39. Interview 8
40. Interviews 6, 12, 13, 20
41. Fair, Pastimes and Politics, Ch. 4
42. Interview 20
43. Interview 19
44. Interview 14
45. Interviews 1, 2, 4, 5, 11, 15, 16, 17
46. Interview 5
47. Interview 8
48. Interview 3
49. Interview 7
50. Presidential Decree No. 6 of 1966. The only exception was if the woman could prove that her suitor had been imprisoned for theft, or that he had contagious syphilis, tuberculosis, or leprosy. Zanzibar National Archives (hereafter ZNA), BA 104: Gazeti Rasmi, 26 February, 1966
51. East African Standard, September to March 1970
52. The Guardian, 14 March 1973
53. The Daily Nation, 23 March 1973
54. See also Glassman for a discussion of the historical roots of these ideas, Jonathon Glassman, "Sorting Out the Tribes: The Creation of Racial Identities in Colonial Zanzibar's Newspaper Wars," Journal of African History 41, 3 (2000), 395-428
55. The Guardian, 14 September 1971
56. The Economist, 23 September 1971
57. East African Standard, 5 June 1970
58. Interviews 1, 8, 19
59. Margaret Strobel, Muslim Women in Mombasa, 1890-1975 (New Haven, 1979)
60. Sarah Mirza and Margaret Strobel, Three Swahili Women: Life Histories from Mombasa, Kenya (Bloomington, 1989)
61. Terence Ranger, Dance and Society in Eastern Africa (London, 1975)
62. Eileen Ruth Farrell, "Ngoma ya Ushindani: Competitive Song Exchange and the Subversion of Hierarchy in a Swahili Muslim Town on the Kenya Coast" (PhD. thesis Harvard University, 1980)
63. Interview 21
64. Themes of militarism and parodies of the British armed forces also occurred among men's dance groups. See Ranger, Dance and Society
65. Steve Martin, "Brass Bands and the Beni Phenomenon in Urban East Africa, African Music 7, 1 (1991), 72-81
66. J Clyde Mitchell, The Kalela Dance (Manchester, 1956), 10-14
67. Strobel, Muslim Women
68. Mirza and Strobel, Three Swahili Women
69. Interview 20
70. Interview 14
71. ZNA BA 30/5: Annual Report of the DC Urban, 1937
72. Interview 3
73. Interview 8
74. Interview 1
75. Misty Bastian, "Female Alhajis and Entrepreneurial Fashions: Flexible Identities in Southeastern Nigerian Clothing Practice," in Hildi Hendrickson, ed., Clothing and Difference: Embodied Identities in Colonial and Post-colonial Africa (Durham, 1996), 97-113
76. Barbara Cooper, "Reflection on Slavery, Seclusion and Female Labor in the Maradi Region of Niger in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries," Journal of African History 35 (1994), 61-78
77. Karen Tranberg Hansen, Salaula: The World of Secondhand Clothing and Zambia (Chicago, 2000)
78. Elisabeth Linnebuhr, "Kanga" Popular Cloths with Messages," in Werner Graebner, ed., Sokomoko: Popular Culture in East Africa (Atlanta, 1992), 81-90
79. Phyllis Martin, "Contesting Clothes in Colonial Brazzaville," Journal of African History 35, 3 (1994), 401-26
80. Laura Fair, "Dressing Up: Clothing, Class and Gender in Post-abolition Zanzibar," Journal of African History 39 (1998), 63-94
81. Mary Ellen Roach-Higgins et. al., eds., Dress and Identity (New York, 1995)
82. Interviews 4, 6, 14, 18, 19
83. Interview 4
84. Interview 4
85. Interview 9. Also 1, 3, 4, 18
86. Interview 3
87. Interviews, 1, 2, 3, 6, 7, 9, 17
88. A reference to strength as well as wealth, as the materials one's home was built out of (typically either coral stone or mud and wattle) served as significant public markers of a family's wealth and social position in society. Garth Andrew Myers, "Eurocentrism and African Urbanization: the Case of Zanzibar's Other Side," Antipode 26, 3 (1994), 195-215
89. Interview 1
90. Interview 1
91. Interview 20
92. Gary Burgess, "Cinema, Bell Bottoms, and Miniskirts."
93. Interview 10
94. Interview 2
95. Interview 2, 11, 15, 16
96. Interview 17
97. Karin Barber, "Popular Arts in Africa," African Studies Review 30, 3 (1987), 1-78
98. Billy Bergman, African Pop: Goodtime Kings(Blandford, 1985)
99. Lansine Kaba, "The Cultural Revolution, Artistic Creativity and Freedom of Expression in Guinea," The Journal of Modern African Studies 14, 2 (1976), 201-218
100. Leroy Vail and Landeg White, Power and the Praise Poem: Southern African Voices in History (Oxford, 1991), especially 264-70
101. E.J. Collins, "Ghanaian Highlife," African Arts 10, 1 (1976), 62-68
102. Nimrod Asante-Darko and Sjaak Van der Geest, "The Political Meaning of Highlife Songs in Ghana," African Studies Review 25, 1 (1982), 27-35
103. Helen Nabasuta Mugambi, "Intersections: (En)Gendered Space and the Female Text in Luganda Popular Radio Songs," paper presented to the Institute for Advanced Study and Research in the African Humanities, Northwestern University, December, 1992
104. George Nurse, "Popular Songs and National Identity in Malawi," African Music 3 (1964), 101-06
105. Interview 2
106. Interview 17
107. Interview 22