Tucked away off Makutano Road in the Tanzanian city of Dar es Salaam’s Kinondoni district is a small studio with wood lattice walls, a Yamaha keyboard, and badges from the Nyege Nyege festival hanging from the walls. It’s in this little sweatbox that Mohamed Hamza Ally, also known as Sisso, has spent the last seven years producing some of the fastest club music in the world. It’s called singeli, named after a legend about a local dancer named Kisingeli who drove people mad with a dance that imitated a dog. The music itself is a mix of Tanzanian styles that grew out of block party movements and soundsystem culture of the early ‘00s. It’s part sped-up mchiriku, with its looping melodies and accordion synths, and part taarab, with it’s improvisational piano licks—all while mixing in the kicks of Afro-house and the spirit of a hip-hop MC. And while singeli parties are known for their joyful twerking and reckless energy, the MCs typically rap about relationship troubles, financial misfortune, or the burdens of street life. Singeli was originally viewed as “hoodlum music,” something dangerous and better left on the margins. It took singeli artists enduring years of local scrutiny before they finally earned respect.
But this didn’t discourage early pioneers like Sisso. He first dabbled in the music industry by renting out CDs from his home neighborhood of Mburahati. One day, he got the idea to put a partition in the middle of his CD library and set up a studio on the other side. For 500 shillings (about $0.20) kids from the neighborhood could come in and record a track. Eventually, Sisso made enough money to be able to buy a mic, start recording bigger Bonga Flava and hip-hop artists, and to get his hands on FL Studios—a rarity in a zone where cracked Fruity Loops and Virtual DJ kits are the norm. “At that time, it was just normal music,” says Sisso from his studio in Kinondoni. “We didn’t want to get money, we were just doing it to impress ourselves!” It was an encounter with Nyege Nyege, the East African outsider music powerhouse, that resulted in Sounds of Sisso—a 14-track, no-limits collection that brings together singeli figureheads like MC Makavelli and producer Bamba Pana. At a time when singeli had already taken over the musical imagination of Tanzania—being played in clubs and used as political campaign soundtracks—the raw, 200 BPM sound now found a new connection with happy hardcore music lovers all over the world, setting in motion a series of tours, albums, and international interest.
Cassette, 2 x Vinyl LP
It was shortly after that Sisso met Michael Mganga, aka Maiko. Maiko came from the Morogoro region in Eastern Tanzania, where he used to work as a computer repairman and played the occasional show as a pickup keyboard player. In 2011, Maiko decided to commit himself to producing music, moving to Dar es Salaam and eventually learning about Sisso and his production house, Sisso Records. The two quickly joined forces, Maiko providing the hectic melodies while Sisso plugged in battering drum samples. It’s a match perfectly suited for live performance: On one end of the stage, Maiko, playing his Yamaha keyboard like a guitar—and occasionally behind his head, or with his tongue; on the other, Sisso, bouncing around with a computer keyboard full of mind-blowing rhythms. The two have been touring like this for years, peaking with a recent viral Boiler Room performance.
It is from these experiences on the road, in the studio, and the never-ending—sometimes competitive—jam sessions that we get Singeli Ya Maajabu, or Singeli of Wonders. While the two have undoubtedly made hundreds of unique records from their live sessions, this collection of live recordings has a particularly open vision of what singeli is and could be. On tracks like “Uhondo” or “Kazi Ipo” you can clearly hear European club sounds pumping into the singeli-verse, the duo stealing some tech synths or gabber bass and subsuming it into the uncut DIY energy of singeli. The record is also radically experimental. Halfway through, we’re introduced to “Mangwale,” a choral overlay with maximum echo—and not a single beat. The sample that drives the song is unknown; it could be a taarab imitation, or something from the deep well of Nyege’s experimental recordings. It is by far the most ethereal and lighthearted moment of the record. After that comes “Jimwage,” which dabbles in IDM noise, and “Njopeka” which is an audio freakout. The forward-thinking yet technically minimal style finds an appropriate analogy in the mish-mash of hand drawn hardware that appears on the cover.
Vinyl LP
“He is my mchawi,” Maiko says of Sisso. The word is Swahili for “vibes guy,” and Singeli is nothing if not vibes. “I feel the vibes and put some different taste,” Maiko continues. “But if I see someone sitting down I can’t do anything.” Once the people are moving, “just add ladha [taste],” says Sisso. Of that, the duo has plenty. And though Singeli Ya Maajabu is a kaleidoscopic portrayal of singeli’s potential, the well still runs deep. Singeli taarab, singeli mdundiko, singeli mnanda, (the latter are both traditional dances found in Tanzania): Sisso and Maiko are ambassadors for all of them, and much more. But curious listeners will have to dig a bit to sift through the nuance. “We thank God that what we were expecting to happen has already happened,” Sisso says of their success. “Now we need to see a big star come from singeli music,”
And then he adds with a wink: “And now, I am thinking who it’s going to be.”
