Ukini Village and drive back to Dar es Salaam.
Liwambwe
We left the Bagamoyo Country Club early on February 22 to go to the Ukuni Village to visit the Makonde tribe, to record the group Liwambwe. The Group Leader is: Atanas Teleni. It is a fairly new group, having played off and on for three years. They had unique drums, including small drums with wooden spikes on bottom to be embedded in sand, called the Siganga.
They also had a pair of drums called the Likuti and a long drum called the Msondo, and a very long thin drum called a Neya. Here’s the set:
In the dance they had a character in a mask called a Lipiko, who wore a vest called a Mjuga.
They played five songs:
- Malala Kujunga: Essentially means ‘be calm and quite, we are about to perform and need you to be quiet’
- Nchakacha: A dance with the Lipiko (masked character)
- Tumpete Mwana: ‘Soothing the baby’
- Apelambe: About a doctor who has all the medicines to heal, but the singer asks, why he couldn’t save his own wife
- Dede: ‘Grasshopper’
We then packed up for a drive to Dar es Salaam and a return to the Mediterraneo hotel. After a brief rest we headed to Alliance Francaise, Dar es Salaam to watch Leo’s concert. Elliot and Sophie were a warm up act, singing ‘You Ask’ and ‘Madeline’. Then Leo played to a large audience of his supporters. A dance troupe danced in the Segere style for many of the songs. This is a Tanzanian style from the south. Here’s Leo performing:
