Various artists: Asili ya Mama review – Tanzanian field recordings tell women’s stories with an energetic trill

(Hukwe Zawose Foundation)
These stories of family bonds capture traditional music that’s equal parts rhythmic, melodic and harmonic, and rarely heard outside Indigenous communities

Folk song collecting by women has an illustrious history, but also an exciting present, as this set of 10 energetic Tanzanian field recordings demonstrates. Put together by documentarian Ruth Ndeto and musician Msafiri Zawose (brother of Pendo from the brilliant Zawose Queens, and son of the late folk pioneer Hukwe), Asili ya Mama (Origin of Mother) showcases the rhythmic, melodic and harmonic invention of Wagogo, Waluguru and Wasambaa women. Here are songs that have “carried culture and music in everyday life”, say the liner notes, while rarely being heard beyond their communities.

Almost in counterpoint to the croak of passing birds, a brisk female singer kicks off the album opener, Baba Mwenda, a storytelling song warning against greed. Other women join her in unison, as do traditional shakers and tin drums, with a bubbling, playful defiance. Wedding song Chamsola comes next, driven by the resonant ring of a mheme drum and harmonies full of shimmering opacity, like a midnight-blue sea, then Chamwiloa, a fast-paced song about the formal union of families after marriage, which races towards its conclusion with percussive intensity.