16:30 - 17:30
Sean Rafferty presents a selection of music and guests from the arts world.
   World Shaker Award 2007: Yusuf Mahmoud & Hildegard Kiel In 2006 Thomas Brooman, WOMAD director and co-founder, became the first recipient of the new "World Shaker" Award. This award recognises the enormous contribution made to World Music by those who are rarely in the public eye - but whose work is invaluable nonetheless. In 2007 the World Shaker Award goes to two people who have had a huge influence on revitalising the local music scene on the island of Zanzibar, Yusuf Mahmoud and Hildegard Kiel.  Zanzibar's traditional music was slowly falling out of favour with its young people...until Yusuf and Hilda got involved. The majority of young people on the island prefer listening to American hip-hop and its local Swahili-language equivalent, bongo flava, rather than the island's major entertainment form of the 1960's: taarab. Yet each February for the past four years the Island's most prolific and successful taarab orchestra, the Culture Musical Club, has been top of the bill at the yearly Zanzibar music festival, a festival which is now bringing the island's musical past into the present www.busaramusic.com  The artistic director of the festival is Yusuf Mahmoud, better known across Zanzibar simly as DJ Yusuf. Yusuf himself was born in the UK, where he worked promoting African music events for Anti-Apartheid, and first came to Zanzibar working for the ZIFF Festival of the Dhow Countries as artistic director. He stayed on to become a DJ and start his own NGO, Busara Promotions, a non-profit NGO working throughout East Africa to promote local and international music, build skills and develop networks. Yusuf has revitalised the local scene in Zanzibar, the traditional roots music from unyago kidumbak to taarab, but also the new rap based bongo flava scene, which is ever popular and now draws more on the traditional music culture of Tanzania and Zanzibar. He has put taarab in all its modern forms on the world music map. Yusuf first introced taarab music in Europe through the larger than life persona of taarab queen, Bi Kidude. She is Zanzibar's most famous cultural ambassador and East Africa's legendary barefoot diva of taarab and unyago traditional music. In 2005, Bi Kidude was presented with the WOMEX lifetime achievement award. She received the honours in recognition of her more than 80 years of singing as serving as a cultural mediator and advisor of the younger generations, including matters of sex and marriage.  Another unsung hero who has worked on further developing local traditions in Zanzibar is Hildegard Kiel.Hildegard spent her childhood in mainland Tanzania and returned to work in Zanzibar in the year 2000. She is the founder and director of the Dhow Countries Music Academy (DCMA) www.zanzibarmusic.org Zanzibar's first music school and the only institution of its kind in East Africa.  DCMA focuses mainly on teaching traditional music of the Swahili Coast and the Indian Ocean Region. The Academy provides music lessons as well as instruments at minimal cost to about 100 students each semester interested in studying music related to their cultural background and has over 500 registered members. Special workshops, seminars, concerts, exchange programs and master classes take place throughout the year. The school is located in the Old Customs House on the waterfront of Stone Town overlooking the Indian Ocean, emanating a cacophony of sounds all around the year. Students come to practice, take lessons, study or simply to socialize and play together. The students fees are highly subsidized so that it is affordable for everyone - most students (the majority young men and women) as well as teachers come from Zanzibar and Tanzania. In addition to the town activities, the village program takes music education to rural areas, and the first branch of DCMA was recently established in Mahonda, a small village 25 km north of Stone Town. The Childrens Program reaches about 250 children in public and private schools. Yusuf and Hilda's joint efforts have brought about a revitalisation of the local scene and the island's musical heritage. The result is a new musical landscape where traditional Zanzibar music lives together with modern influences. BBC Radio 3 is delighted to award Yusuf and Hildegard a World Shaker planet award to recognise their enormous contribution to both the local scene in Zanzibar and the world music scene globally. | |
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