Songstress who breathed life into Taarab

Many years ago, somewhere in the Mfagimaringo village of Zanzibar, a baby girl was born on a date that remains a mystery. The birth was premature, and so the tiny baby girl, wrapped in the clothes of the time, struggled to survive the first few days of her life.“This is hardly a baby,” he is said to have exclaimed. “It is just a teeny-weeny little ‘thing’”.Yes, Fatuma Binti Baraka was that tiny, and that Kidude description stuck on her until her death on April 17, only that this time it was not used in the quasi-derogatory manner of her formative years, but as a stage name for a woman who had become the face and voice of Zanzibari music.“I cannot say that I know myself,” she once told a journalist, “but my birth was at the time of the Rupee.” The Rupee, which replaced cowry shells as a medium of exchange, was introduced by Asian traders on the East African Coast before the German invasion.After running away from a forced marriage at the age of 13, she moved to mainland Tanzania, from where she toured East Africa with a Taarab group.DocumentaryFrom the teachings of Siti Binti Saad, she went on to conquer the world through her songs, such as Muhogo wa Jangombe, which was later re-done by Lady Jay Dee.In 2005, Bi Kidude received the prestigious WOMEX Award for her outstanding contribution to music and culture in Zanzibar; and, in a documentary titled As Old As My Tongue by Andy Jones, she was depicted as a living legend of Zanzibar.She never had any children, and whiled away her time smoking cigarettes and, every now and then, swigging her favourite gin, Konyagi.But alcohol and Islam do not mix, so this obsession with the bottle irked many of her family members and close friends. She, however, explained that she only did it “for fun”, and that her religious beliefs and morals were still intact.

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Songstress who breathed life into Taarab