Take 2

From NYC to East Africa (1998 to 2001)...More stories of My Life in Film by Rosa Tyabji

Moving from NYC to Tanzania in 1998 was a big step. I knew that I would keep doing film work in Africa, too. Well, it turned out to be more digital video, BetaCam & Mini DV productions than film, but I still got some 35mm experience in between the heat of the Rift Valley and the cool Indian Ocean...

When Michel and I first discussed the possibility of a move to East Africa, I had no hesitation. I knew that we had to do this. We dreamed about taking our production facility, a small recording studio geared towards music production and location audio recording, and making recordings in remote locations.

Michel really wanted to record traditional Tanzanian music, something he had searched for and never got much access to while in the west. Sure, there were recordings done by Hugh Tracey and other ethnomusicologists, but none of these were multi-track recordings that were treated to a professional production method such as we employ in recording studios. The ethnographers and musicologists wanted everything recorded just as it occurred then and there. We wanted it to be facilitated and produced just as any pop music would be.

The first steps were to make connections with the friends of Michel's parents that were in the media industry in Tanzania. The next was to write and send out our proposal for the work we would do, the contribution we could make, and the outputs or impact we speculated that it could have.

The first of these connections proved to become a friend and a force for progress in the industry in East Africa. Based in Zanzibar, Emerson Skeens had just started the Zanzibar International Film Festival in 1997, the year before we arrived in Tanzania.
We visited Zanzibar when we arrived in Tanzania in 1998 and loved the place immediately. Emerson welcomed us to Zanzibar and attempted to convince us to settle on the island and set up shop, but we had already committed to working in Dar es Salaam with the Ministry for Education and Culture (Wizara ya Elimu na Utamaduni).
However, we attended the festival in 1999 and then worked as the audio consultants and technicians for the 9 nights of music programming in the year 2000. Coincidentally, two Swahili language feature films that we had done audio for also premiered in that festival, these were "Neema" (Tanzania) and "Yellow Card" (Zimbabwe). They also shared the festival's People's Choice Award for the year 2000.

The National Arts Council (Baraza la Sanaa la Taifa), part of the Ministry for Education and Culture, had responded to our initial proposal by offering us Exemption status and invited us to Tanzania as guests of the government, volunteers for the project which we proposed to implement together. This became known as the Urithi Arts Program (Heritage Arts).

The Urithi Arts Program had a mandate to "Preserve and Promote Tanzanian Traditional Music". To this end, we began to set up a recording facility to make quality multi-track music productions, film and video documentation of the music. This place became known as "Makuti Studio" because we decorated the walls with makuti, a traditional woven palm thatch used for roofing. We used it as diffusion to break up the parallel walls and right angles in the main performance area of the studio, and it worked very well to give a pleasant acoustic quality to the space.

We eventually were able to record, on DVCam video and multi-track audio, 9 different groups of traditional Tanzanian musicians who represented 3 regions of the country - Pwani, Morogoro and Dodoma. This took us 2.5 years to set up and implement, and recording didn't occur until 2001. When it was finished the recorded material was handed over to the artists and the National Arts Council for their own use. They also granted us permission to release and promote these works, which we have not been able to do yet.

So, between 1999 amd 2001, we also recorded and produced many other multi-media works, including the wonderful music which we now distribute on Limitless Sky Records. Rosters of our work can be downloaded in PDF format here.

Some of the first projects we worked on in 1999 were produced by a Dar es Salaam based shelter for runaway and homeless youth, called the Youth Cultural and Information Center (YCIC). YCIC was run by Geoffrey Mhagama and Anne McCandless. Geoffrey had just finished writing a feature length script that became the hit film "Neema". We provided all the audio services for this film, from location audio recording to musical score production, sound design and audio post production.

"Neema" told the desperate and heartbreaking story of two children forced onto the street after the break-up of their parents and subsequent abuse by the new step-mother and alcoholic father. Many common societal problems that lead kids to runaway were explored in the film. Another aspect making it a rare reflection of the reality was the fact that street kids who were participating in the programs at YCIC were the actors. They had all been through these hardships first hand. It wasn't acting that was captured on that film.

The success of "Neema" led us to become sought after in Dar es Salaam for production work. We then provided audio services for other video productions, the biggest being the production of the Swahili language version of Yellow Card from Zimbabwe.

For this production we had to first hire a translator to create the Swahili language version of the script, get it approved, and then hire a Director and a cast of voice talents to perform the new script.
We rehearsed and rehearsed and rehearsed the talent until the Swahili parts fit into the time frame of the original version, which was in English. Then we recorded and edited down the new dialogue recordings until the timings were an exact match.
After that we also went around the town collecting sounds that needed to be replaced to make the Swahili version authentic. The most fun of these outings was to the National Stadium, where we recorded a soccer match between the two big Tanzanian teams - Simba and Yanga. The crowds singing and shouting at this exciting match in Swahili were then used instead of the Shona, Ndebele and English languages that were shouted during the filming in Zimbabwe.

We received some good attention from these activities, as well as the music productions we had undertaken in 1999, and we were interviewed by local and international TV networks. Some of these were: BBC Network Africa, ITV (Tanzania) "Dar Wiki Hii" with Masoud Masoud, and DTV. Read more about the film and television industry in Tanzania at this website: Africa Film TV.

So, from 1999 into the year 2000 we were working on a variety of music projects, from local hip hop acts to Christian choirs, traditional ngoma and musically inclined expatriates. These projects kept us busy until the next video gig - the BBC-MPM's project for the International Trachoma Initiative, funded by Pfizer. Marshall Plan of the Mind Trust (MPM) is a charitable organisation that operates as part of the BBC's World Service.

We were the location audio recording team for a series of theatre and musical performances that took place in arid Dodoma, central Tanzania, that were produced to help sensitize the Wagogo villagers to their need for this drug to help alleviate trachoma. The talent which participated was some of the best in the nation - the late great Patrick Balisidya, Parapanda Arts Theatre Troupe, and the Amani Ensemble.

We recorded two theatrical works as short films, and 3 music videos. These performances and plays were videotaped and recorded by us for use in educating the people of Dodoma, and in a documentary that ITI showed to the UN, WHO and World Bank officials to solicit more funding.

After the heat of Dodoma we head back to the coast. Spring of 2000 saw us depart for Zanzibar for over a month to help set-up and install the audio systems for the upcoming 4th Annual Zanzibar International Film Festival. This was quite a task, and would make my page very long to tell the whole of this wonderful story.

Suffice to say, we spent June and July fully engaged in ZIFF. We rented a dhow to take our equipment from Dar es Salaam to Zanzibar, set up our sound reinforcement systems for the main music stage, and proceeded to engineer 9 nights of music concerts for the festival. The variety of performances was wonderful, with musical groups ranging from traditional ngoma with three performers (like Bi Kidude) to Taarab orchestras of over forty people (such as Nadi Ikhwaan Safaa). International acts also participated, such as Tyoussi Mad (Morocco), Rita Ray (UK/ Ghana) and Zein L'Abdin (Kenya).