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East African Music

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The music of East Africa and the Horn: the guitar-band pop of Nairobi and Kampala, Swahili-coast taarab, Somali poetic song and the many drum, lyre and dance traditions of the region's peoples.

Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Somalia and the Horn of Africa · emerged Ancient times · peak 1960s-1980s

Also called: music of east africa

History

Coastal trade brought Arab and Indian instruments to the Swahili towns centuries before Congolese guitar records and Cuban rumba reached inland cities in the 1950s, where local musicians turned them into benga and kadongo kamu.

What it sounds like

Guitar-band pop of the 1960s-1980s
Coastal Arab and Indian influence
Lyres, drums and call-and-response
Poetry-led song in the Horn

Beneath it: benga, dhaanto, kadongo kamu, kilapanga, omutibo, qaraami, unakesa

Beside it: taarab