Bagamoyo: The Berkelee of Tanzania

A crescent moon of sand reaches gently out into the Indian Ocean as if trying to touch Zanzibar, 20 kilometers to the east. Palm trees with gracefully arced trunks line the beach creating the perfect sunset panorama. Fishermen sit on buckets scaling their fish while women crowd around in their colorful kangas bargaining for the best price. A 15-foot hammerhead was caught today, sprawled on the beach it still seems alive with otherworldly power. A herd of insanely long-horned cattle are driven down the beach and into the surf by a couple of barefoot teenagers. Having never seen cattle on a beach, we asked the locals what was happening.

“They’re going onto the boat.”
“The boys?”
“No, the cows.”

In Norway, picturesque cows dot the mountainsides that crash down into the fjords, and you can imagine that if a Norwegian farmer ever decided to move his cattle by water, he’d have a big iron ship waiting to transport them. But this is Bagamoyo, Tanzania, East Africa, and the boats here are still made the same way they were thousands of years ago. The long wooden dhow with its single sail gave medieval Arabs supremacy over the Red Sea trading routes, and is still used daily along the Swahili coast from Somalia to Mozambique.

Historically infamous as the starting and ending point of the Arab slave route across Tanzania into Central Africa, Bagamoyo (which means “lay your heart down”) is fast becoming one of our favorite places in Tanzania. We first came here in December on the recommendation of my good friend Jake Thomsen, who found out about Bagamoyo when he came to Tanzania in 1999. Jake took six weeks of drum lessons and was told by his teacher of a music school where the students start their day by drumming on the beach at sunrise, singing into the wind, then diving into the ocean. He then called his parents and said he wouldn’t be returning to Brown for his junior year.

Fortunately for me, Jake came back and taught me how to play the djembe. After college he enrolled at the Berkelee School of Music and I was enticed to move to Boston so I too could play music 8 hours a day. Bagamoyo’s Chuo cha Sanaa (College of Arts - LINK) is Tanzania’s answer to Berkelee. Founded in 1981, it is one of very few arts colleges in all of Africa. Its teachers comprise the Bagamoyo Players, who have performed the music of Tanzania’s 125 ethnic groups at concerts all over the world. For those interested, I highly suggest that you download their 2006 release “Tramo” on iTunes.

Every year, the College of Arts hosts the Bagamoyo Music and Arts Festival (LINK), an event that draws performers from all over Africa and tourists from all over the world. It’s a week of round-the-clock performances and bonfires on the beach, and we’re determined to make it this year. It will be October 14-18, anyone want to join us?!

As if this weren’t enough to make us fall in love with Bagamoyo, it turns out that Norway has been supporting the College of Arts for about a decade now. There is an exchange program for students and teachers of the University of Stavanger to study and work in Bagamoyo, and NORAD (LINK) money helped produce the “Tramo” album. Consequently, many locals know how to say “kjempebra” and “tusen takk,” and we share many a laugh while sitting under the stars at the local café, mixing languages after a day of drumming and singing.