Kidumbak is a dance-centered Zanzibari wedding entertainment. It is performed by small, loosely organized groups, usually consisting of a violin as the single melodic instrument, two vidumbak (plural; small clay drums) as the major and style-defining percussive instrument, sanduku (‘box’ in Swahili; similar to a washtub or gutbucket bass) and smaller percussion instruments. Several members of the group alternate as lead singers, with family and wedding guests joining in as chorus and dancers. It is generally performed in an open space in the vicinity of the bride’s home and the style is popular mainly in the lower-class areas of Zanzibar town and the islands’ rural areas.

Kidumbak is the name of the two small clay drums that form the core of every kidumbak ensemble. The meaning of ki-dumbak is ‘small dumbak’ and, in fact, these drums are easy-to-make, low-cost variants of the larger instruments found in the Zanzibar taarab orchestras. Additionally, however, they lend their name to, and characterize, the whole musical genre. The two vidumbak are identical in size, though they are tuned differently. The one tuned slightly lower is called ngoma ya kudunda (‘the sounding drum’). Its player marks the major tempo playing straight through. The ngoma ya kuchang’anya (‘the combining, or mixing drum’) improvises on top of the basic rhythm provided by the other drum.

Additional percussion instruments are the cherewa, a type of maracas manufactured from coconut shells filled with seeds, and vijiti, short wooden sticks, played in the manner of claves. In the faster and more intense section, the vijiti player bangs on the table that is placed amid the instrumentalists. The table also holds a brass tray, into which coins and paper money are tossed as tuzo, a gift to the musicians.

The kidumbak ensemble consists of a single melodic instrument, customarily a violin. Its player introduces new songs and signals the changes and transitions from one song to the other. In the ensemble, however, the violin’s function is not so much to play melody but rather to add texture and a thrill to the proceedings.

The most outstanding instrument of the ensemble, though, is the sanduku, or box-bass. It holds special importance for the female wedding audience. Solo dancers frequently draw close to the sanduku player, almost pushing him off his instrument as they rub their behinds on his shoulder to incite ever more inventive and arousing rhythmic variations. The sanduku playing style is more akin to a deep-tuned drum than to the playing of counter-melodic lines, adding further rhythmic accents to the percussion ensemble.

A kidumbak performance typically starts out with a number of slower songs, often covers of the latest taarab hit songs. As tempo and intensity rise, some of the players take turns singing, stringing together fragments or catchphrases of older and well-known songs into an ever-evolving medley that usually lasts about an hour. As for the dancing wedding audience, with the intensity of the music rising to ever new heights, in order to be better visible to the whole congregation, some of them will jump, individually or in pairs, onto the musicians’ table and perform a highly erotic hip-gyrating dance, punctuated by ululations from a roaring audience that throws in more tuzo money for especially provocative acts.

Kidumbak is sometimes called ki-taarab, ‘a diminutive type of taarab,’ not only because contemporary kidumbak often makes use of the latest taarab hit songs, but also since many youngsters hone their musical skills in kidumbak groups before being admitted into a taarab musical club. Against this view of taarab as the great tradition, older musicians such as Makame Faki – who for decades has led Zanzibar’s most popular kidumbak group Sina Chuki, and who is also an eminent taarab singer and composer – hold that the original Swahili taarab ensembles, before the advent of the firqah-style orchestral taarab of the 1950s and 1960s, were not so different from modern kidumbak, with just two small drums, tambourine, violin and ‘ud, and also performing for dances.

According to oral history, the ‘ud was the original melodic instrument used in kidumbak. Bakari Abeid, who became Zanzibar’s most celebrated taarab singer of the 1960s, led a kidumbak ensemble in the 1950s. A kidumbak group by the name of Shime Kuokoana was also at the root of the foundation of the Culture Musical Club taarab orchestra in 1958. In the 1960s kidumbak groups started to include rhythms and elements of muziki wa dansi from mainland Tanganyika, a lineage still apparent when, in the faster sections of kidumbak medleys, catchphrases or parts of songs by Cuban Marimba and Morogoro Jazz (the most popular bands of the late 1950s and 1960s) are quoted. Even the musical terminology of older kidumbak musicians refers to dance music; the fast sections after the main song are called mapachanga or machácha, after the pachanga or chachacha dance crazes of the 1960s. Younger musicians call these parts mgoma (i.e., the drum/dance part). The sanduku is a 1960s invention as well, possibly also an inspiration taken from muziki wa dansi (i.e., an aural equivalent of the double bass or bass guitar).

Makame Faki & Sina Chuki Kidumbaki

For decades Makame Faki’s Sina Chuki was the most popular and style-defining kidumbak ensemble. Makame had first made a name as a singer in local samba and kidumbak groups in his home village in the north of Unguja Island. He moved to Zanzibar town in the early 1970s joining the Culture Musical Club taarab orchestra as a singer and eventually also as a violinist, ‘ud, cello player and composer. At this time he also founded Sina Chuki with fellow singer and kidumbak player Khamis Nyange, violinist Dude Kitende and sanduku specialist Saleh Kiroboto. No early recordings of this or any other kidumbak ensemble exist to document the style’s development. Occasional audio and video recordings of wedding celebrations are the only sources that may date back to the 1980s. A few performance recordings from the later 1990s and early 2000s were made available by local cassette-duplicating shops. More recently Makame made some of these available on CD-R discs through his own small shop in Ng’ambo. Over the years Makame has performed kidumbak on international stages as part of tours with the Culture Musical Club and Kithara. The following video from a rehearsal by the latter band showcases the late Makame Faki (he died in 2020) as well as the playing techniques of the sanduku bass and the vidumbaki.

Video

Werner Graebner

Discography

Kidumbak Kalcha. Ng’ambo: The Other Side of Zanzibar. Dizim Records 4501. 1997: Germany.

Zanzibar: Music of Celebration. Topic Records TSCD917. 2000: UK.

Zanzibar: Soul and Rhythm. De l’ame à la danse. Virgin Records 5957370. 2003: France.

Visual 1 : Kidumbak performance in rural Zanzibar [Photo: Werner Graebner 1995]

Audio : Kidumbak performance [excerpt, Zanzibar 1995]