Along with the pioneering teenager Siti binti Saad (1880-1950
Bi Kidude was one of the first Zanzibari women to lift the veil and sing in public. This was a courageous move in a society where women were confined to purdah. The two were the first female communicators on the islands of Zanzibar.
The Zanzibari singer Bi Kidude (Kiswahili for "Little Granny"), who has died at the age of around 102, had a haunting voice and enigmatic stage presence. In the last 30 years she came to be widely recognised as one of the finest musicians from an island famous for spices and open to influences from the east.
In 2005 Bi Kidude received the prestigious WOMEX award for her outstanding contribution to music and culture in Zanzibar. She died on 17 April 2013.
She grew up in the village of Mfereji maringo, where her father was a coconut seller: of her age, she said, "I cannot say that I know it myself, but my birth was at the time of the rupee."
The Indian currency was used in east Africa up to the first world war, and a near-contemporary calculated that Bi Kidude was born around 1910.
Along with the pioneering teenager Siti binti Saad (1880-1950), Bi Kidude was one of the first Zanzibari women to lift the veil and sing in public. This was a courageous move in a society where women were confined to purdah. The two were the first female communicators on the islands of Zanzibar.
Their original music was dumbak, based on a drum rhythm and performed in small groups. This was blended with an early form of taarab, an Arab/Swahili fusion introduced to Zanzibar in the early 1900s. Taarab combines violins, flutes and Arabic instruments including the zither-like kanoon and the oud, the ancestor of the lute, with a variety of African drums.
There are several taarab variants throughout Kiswahili-speaking east Africa. The Zanzibar style owes most to Egyptian firquah orchestras of the 1930s, but prior to that the Indian influence was more pronounced.
The women's messages were provocative, often ridiculing men's sexual behaviour and sometimes decrying the abuse of women. In 1928, Saad travelled to Bombay to make some of the earliest recordings by an African artist. Bi Kidude set out in the other direction, starting a marathon tour of east Africa. She travelled to the mainland by dhow and moved around occasionally by train, but mostly on foot. Her repertoire was based on Saad's songs, adapted and embellished to fit her own purposes.
Kidude likes walking barefoot she much believes she was not born with shoes and one gets weak when wearing shoes that's how much she has love for her culture,this has left many people with surprise seeing this old lady walking and singing barefoot, but why not appreciate also the work she does preparing young Swahili women for their transition through puberty also teaching women to pleasure their husbands, while lecturing against the dangers of sexual abuse and oppression.
The fact that Bi.Kidude not having children of her own does not at all affect her she says "i wished to have one of my own but God didn't grant it but i have many "watoto" including you ( meaning Msongo) ,Bi.Kidude is almost always holding a lighter since she likes drinking and smoking .Bi kidude during her interview with the mambo magazine it was said she had decided to ‘clean up her act’.
Instead of smoking Sportsman, the local cigarette brand that are undoubtedly some of the strongest you will find around, she decided to switch to Embassy (a slightly lighter smoke), and instead of drinking Konyagi, the strong local gin, she said she would switch to beer instead – ‘but at least six’. When asked about it in interview, she looks stern for a minute and says that she only drinks and smokes a little “but most of the time it is for fun”.
At the same interview ‘Fatma Binti Baraka’,known as Bi.kidude she explained where her nick name came from, she was a little scrap of a baby, and was wrapped in a bundle of clothes on a bed when her uncle came to visit. He nearly sat down on top of her, when her mother exclaimed no, there was a baby there. Her uncle commented that it was hardly a baby, it was just a ‘tiny bit of stuff’ – in Kiswahili ‘Kidude’.
You might be raising up questions on how Bi got influenced to singing,"she says she learned singing all her songs from "Siti Binti Saad" first women singer in Zanzibar,Siti was well known of her powerful voice and how flamboyant she could get back then,after Siti Binti Saad's death this is when Kidude realized she could cover her footsteps getting advice from different people it helped her to dare.
Bi owns small clay house in Zanzibar Town and settled down to a life grounded in the traditional cultural roots of the society, becoming part of 'Unyago', the initiation process of young Swahili women. Preparations for marriage include the application of elaborate henna designs to the arms and legs of the intended bride. Bi excelled at this art, not only applying the 'wanja' but manufacturing it herself from age old recipes to “make the rainbow shine”. Bi also drew on her vast knowledge of herbs and remedies to establish a reputation as a healer.
RetroAfrica stated that,'Zanzibar', her first solo album, demonstrates Bi Kidude at the peak of her performing power. The first two tracks, recorded in Zanzibar, typify classic small-band taarab. Tracks 4, 5 and 6 were recorded during a tour of Finland with a similar line-up. Tracks 3 and 6 exemplify the Unyago drumming style, and are Bi Kidude's first commercial recordings of this important social music.
The latter track, however, is 'culturally incorrect' as she is accompanied by men in what is an exclusive women's format. Track 7 was recorded with an 'All Star' band during a tour of Germany.
During the mid-1990s Bi Kidude joined forces with the Dar es Salaam band Shikamoo Jazz, whose musicians of Zanzibar origin - Ali Rashid, sax and Madar Mselem, trumpet - provided a solid base for her exploration of taarab/jazz fusion. Track 8, an experimental recording which combines two orchestras, is followed by two tracks recorded at Womad in 1995, during the 'East African Legends' tour of Britain.
Her contribute to Sauti za Busara festival.
Bi kidude has been a big strike on the busara festivals,she has always made it happen,may it be citizens or foreigners we would all wait for that time when they call upon "Malkia wa Taarab na Unyango" we would all stand and cheer up.this years event we were all fooled an announcement had been made before the event’s opening day to inform festival-goers that Bi Kidude would not be able to perform this year due to illness.The announcement caught us with fear since Bi kidude is always on the fixture,she has been embracing us on that Busara stage since the first festival of 2004.
singing career lay dormant for almost 50 years, but in the 1980s there was a revival of interest in her music when she performed with the Sahib El-Ahri band. Later, she joined the Zanzibar-based group the Twinkling Stars and toured Germany, Scandinavia, Japan and the Gulf.
She never consciously composed new songs. All her material was based on a limited number of Saad's compositions, around which she improvised so liberally that they became her own. However, in later years she would confuse and combine the material, so that members of the band would need to skip adroitly from one tune to another at any moment. Though she made some recordings, her output was not great.
A small, frail-looking woman, Bi Kidude had enormous stamina and a rugged sense of humour. In Zanzibar she lived in a modest breeze-block house with some of her "grandchildren" and their pigeons. Each Saturday she would perform with the Twinkling Stars at one of the luxury hotels.
In 2005 she won a Womex (World Music Expo) award, and the following year the documentary As Old As My Tongue: The Myth and Life of Bi Kidude was released. She continued to perform until recently.
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