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Coming in at a blistering300 beats per minute, singeli could well be the world’s most frenetic music. The Guardian’sKate Hutchinson travelled to Dar es Salaam to meet a few of its creators, including Rewire 2019 artists Bamba Pana & Makaveli.
“On a neon-lit jetty overlooking the River Nile, a young Tanzanian DJ called Sisso is playing a bracing barrage of blips, bells and breakneck beats that could blast apart a heart-rate monitor. We are at Nyege Nyege, a pan-African festival in Uganda that curates contemporary club music from across the continent, and it’s the first time so many musicians from Tanzania have made it here. Sisso and his peers have taken a 30-hour bus journey and crossed two borders in order to play at the event. Their sets are being streamed live to the world via Boiler Room.
The music these Swahili speed freaks make is a street-level sound known as singeli. It has been ricocheting around the ghettos circling Dar es Salaam for almost 15 years, with unbridled synth lines, percussion pitch-shifted up to alien frequencies and super-speed lyrical flows.
It isn’t as underground now as you might expect. In Tanzania, singeli has become mainstream, like music by Drake or Kendrick Lamar. There is the poppy singeli of artists such as Msaga Sumu and Man Fongo, whose music is slower and more similar to bongo flava, the last big sound to sweep the country. Sisso Records, however, has an uncompromising style, with rapping instead of singing.”
Listen to Bamba Pana’s new albumPoaa belowand learn more about his performance with Makaveli at Rewire 2019 atBamba Pana & Makaveli.
Rewire 2019 Festival Passes are now available for the reduced price of €75 atTickets.