BY THE GUARDIAN REPORTER
18th April 2013
Award-Winning Tanzanian taarab icon Fatma Binti Baraka Hamisi alias Bi Kidude is no more. She died at her Bububu family residence in Zanzibar yesterday aged roundabout 103, leaving the nation engrossed in mourning.
Family spokesman Baraka Abdallah Baraka said she was diabetic and had been undergoing treatment at a hospital in the Zanzibar, adding that she would be buried today at Kitumba in Zanzibar Central District.
President Jakaya Kikwete has expressed sadness over Bi Kidude’s passing, saying he new her primarily because she promoted Tanzania through the singing talent as demonstrated at music and arts festivals across the globe.
The president relayed his condolences to the deceased’s relatives through Information, Youth, Culture and Sports minister Dr Fenella Mukangara, saying they had lost “the pillar of their family”.
He called upon artists in the country to mourn and remember Bi Kidude by emulating her good deeds and continue to cherish and develop the kind of music that made her a legend.
The celebrated music maestro was born to a coconut seller in colonial Zanzibar and grew up in a family of seven in the Zanzibar village of Mfagimarigo.
Bi Kidude’s exact date of birth is unknown. “I cannot say that I know myself, but my birth was at the time of the rupee,” she once said. The Indian currency was used throughout colonial East Africa up to the First World War.Family spokesman Baraka Abdallah Baraka said she was diabetic and had been undergoing treatment at a hospital in the Zanzibar, adding that she would be buried today at Kitumba in Zanzibar Central District.
President Jakaya Kikwete has expressed sadness over Bi Kidude’s passing, saying he new her primarily because she promoted Tanzania through the singing talent as demonstrated at music and arts festivals across the globe.
The president relayed his condolences to the deceased’s relatives through Information, Youth, Culture and Sports minister Dr Fenella Mukangara, saying they had lost “the pillar of their family”.
He called upon artists in the country to mourn and remember Bi Kidude by emulating her good deeds and continue to cherish and develop the kind of music that made her a legend.
The celebrated music maestro was born to a coconut seller in colonial Zanzibar and grew up in a family of seven in the Zanzibar village of Mfagimarigo.
Bi Kidude, as she had come to be known in her late age, was a nickname she got from infancy when her uncle almost sat on the tiny baby and exclaimed that she was but a ‘little thing’ (‘kidude’ in Kiswahili).
She started her musical career in the 1920s, performing with popular cultural troupes. She learnt many of her songs with Siti binti Saad (1880–1950), a pioneering artist of taarab. Since then, Bi Kidude performed in countries all around Europe, the Middle East and Japan.
“I learned all my songs from Siti binti Saad, the first woman singer in Zanzibar,” Bi Kidude would say, adding: “We both had to cover our faces with a fine cloth.”
“Then Siti passed away, but her voice was still in the air,” she noted, adding: “She had a very powerful voice, like mine. There was no difference. So people, some of the highest in the land, said you must do something to show who you are . . . and so I raised the veil”.
The original music was then known as the ‘dumbak’, coined from a traditional one-sided drum and based on an African drum rhythm and early forms of taarab, music which combines Arabic and African flares.
According to one commentator, “Bi Kidude stirred up the world of taarab like nobody else, her bluesy voice touching many a heart, sometimes mournful and sometimes celebratory”.
In the 1980s, Bi Kidude joined Mohammed Ilyas and His Twinkling Stars as the star attraction. During the mid-1990s she joined forces with Dar e Salaam-based Shikamoo Jazz, whose musicians provided a solid base for her exploration of taarab/jazz fusion. She recorded her first solo album only six years ago, the second album being Machozi ya Huba (literally ‘Tears of Love’).
Bi Kidude was also renowned for Unyago dances, which co-opted an ancient traditional ritual performed exclusively for teenage girls using traditional rhythms to teach women how to behave in married life and also on the dangers of sexual abuse and oppression.
At age 13, she fled a forced marriage from Zanzibar to the Mainland and then again in the 1930s left another unsuccessful marriage after which she worked with an Egyptian Taarab group for many years.
Through her music and arts, the diva that she came to be, not only helped maintain the cultural heritage, but also reinvented it, infusing it with local rhythms, jargon and matters of everyday life.
As an entrepreneur, she was creative, innovative and proactive. She excelled at the art of henna designing for brides and even manufactured her own eyeliner from age-old recipes.
Bi Kidude also drew on her vast knowledge of herbs and remedies to establish a reputation as a ‘healer’.
Her many talents were acknowledged by Zanzibar International Film Festival (ZIFF) at the second Festival of the Dhow Countries in 1999, when she was awarded a ‘Lifetime Achievement Award for Contribution to the Arts’.
The unofficial cultural ambassador toured Europe in 2004 with Zanzibar’s Culture Musical Club Taarab Orchestra, before featuring in the annual Zanzibar Sauti za Busara festival every year since.
The following year she won the WOMEX Award 2005 which was presented to her in England. At that event, Buda Musique released the album ‘Zanzibar 4: Bi Kidude’, produced by Jahazi Media and containing songs recorded between 1988 and 2005.
In 2006 ScreenStation Productions and Busara Promotions produced a 66-minute video documentary entitled ‘As Old As My Tongue: the Myth and Life of Bi Kidude’. This is expected to go sky high later this week.
In 2011, Bi Kidude was nominated for the Tanzania Music Awards – Best Collaboration & Best Traditional Song (‘Ahmada’ with Offside trick) and then last year President Kikwete awarded her the Sports and Arts award of all time.
She is also considered to be both a repository and leading exponent of modern Kiswahili culture.
Bi Kidude does not have children of her own, about which she would say: “I wished to have one of my own but God didn’t grant it but I have many ‘watoto’ (children) including you …” She was refereeing to her interviewer, a blogger called Msongo.
Commenting on her singing career, she once quipped: “How can I stop singing? When I sing, I feel like a 14 year old girl again.”
SOURCE: THE GUARDIAN
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