Kidumbak
is a music style, which is closely related to
Taarab.
Contemporary Kidumbak often makes use of the latest taarab hit
song. Many youngsters hone their musical skills in kidumbak groups before
being admitted into a taarab musical club. Kidumbak is therefore sometimes
called kitaarab, 'a diminuitive kind of taarab'. Against this view of
taarab as the great tradition, musicians like Makame Faki hold tha the
most celebrated model for swahili taarab in earlier decades of this
century , the group of
Siti bint Saad,
was not much different even from today's Kidumbaki.
"In the times of Siti bint Saad, the musicians used to squat on the floor, their instruments were two small drums, a tambourine, violin and oud.The audience danced. Thus, this old-time taarab is much more similar to todays Kidumbak than Taarab with its big orchestras and the aloof character of taarab reception."
Even further back in history, photographs and oral traditions from around the turn of the century lead us to earlier Swahili musical forms which feature just two small maruwasi drums and the gambusi stringed lute, a precursor to today's oud.Others therefore consider a kidumbak type of music to be at the roots of taarab, rather than the other way round!
The
kidumbak ensemble consists of a single melodic instrument, customarily a
violin (played in frantic fiddle-style), a sanduku, or tea-chest-bass, two
small clay drums (ki-dumbak), which form the rhythmic core of every such
ensemble and other rhythm instruments, such as cherewa, a kind of maracas
manufactured from coconut shells filled with seeds or mkwasa, short wooden
sticks, played like claves. In contrast to taarab, kidumbak is much more
rhythmic and the lyrics more drastic than the poeticsettings of the taarab
songs, often criticizing other peoples social behavior. At wedding
performances the singer has to be able to string together a well-timed
medley of ngoma songs, and she or he has the ability to compose lyrics on
the spot. At a Zanzibar wedding, one kidumbak set usually lasts for an
hour and as one song joins the next, the intensity heats up, with the main
attraction being the interplay between the players and the dancing and
chorus response by the wedding guests.