Morogoro Jazz Band was a seminal Tanzania

Tanzania

The United Republic of Tanzania is a country in East Africa bordered by Kenya and Uganda to the north, Rwanda, Burundi, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the west, and Zambia, Malawi, and Mozambique to the south. The country's eastern borders lie on the Indian Ocean.Tanzania is a state...

n muziki wa dansi

Muziki wa dansi

Muziki wa dansi , or simply dansi, is a Tanzanian music genre, derivative of Congolese soukous. It is sometimes called Swahili jazz because most dansi lyrics are in Swahili, and "jazz" is an umbrella term used in Central and Eastern Africa to refer to soukous, highlife, and other dance music and...

 band, one of the few that were not based in Dar es Salaam

Dar es Salaam

Dar es Salaam , formerly Mzizima, is the largest city in Tanzania. It is also the country's richest city and a regionally important economic centre. Dar es Salaam is actually an administrative province within Tanzania, and consists of three local government areas or administrative districts: ...

. The band originally played live at the Morogoro Hotel in Morogoro

Morogoro

Morogoro is a city with an urban population of 206,868 in the southern highlands of Tanzania, 190 km west of Dar es Salaam. It is the capital of the Morogoro Region...

 (about 200 km west of Dar) and became very popular in the 1960s

1960s

The 1960s was the decade that started on January 1, 1960, and ended on December 31, 1969. It was the seventh decade of the 20th century.The 1960s term also refers to an era more often called The Sixties, denoting the complex of inter-related cultural and political trends across the globe...

 and 1970s

1970s

File:1970s decade montage.png|From left, clockwise: US President Richard Nixon doing the V for Victory sign after his resignation from office after the Watergate scandal in 1974; Refugees aboard a US naval boat after the Fall of Saigon, leading to the end of the Vietnam War in 1975; The 1973 oil...

, receiving much airplay from Tanzanian radio stations. The leader of the band was guitarist Mbaraka Mwinshehe, a former member of Cuban Branch Jazz. The original lineup also included Salim Abdullah, who would later found Cuban Marimba.

Mwinshehe left Morogoro Jazz Band in 1973, to found another very successful dansi band, Super Volcano.

The Morogoro Jazz Band created a sound that was a fusion of many different influences, including taarab

Taarab

Taarab is a music genre popular in Tanzania and Kenya. It is influenced by music from the cultures with a historical presence in East Africa, including music from East Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, North Africa, the Middle East and Europe...

, Kenyan benga

Benga music

Benga is a genre of Kenyan popular music. It evolved between the late 1940s and late 1960s, in Kenya's capital city of Nairobi. In the 1940s, the African Broadcasting Service in Nairobi aired a steady stream of soukous, South African kwela, Zairean finger-style guitar and various kinds of Cuban...

, Cuba

Cuba

The Republic of Cuba is an island nation in the Caribbean. The nation of Cuba consists of the main island of Cuba, the Isla de la Juventud, and several archipelagos. Havana is the largest city in Cuba and the country's capital. Santiago de Cuba is the second largest city...

n rumba

Rumba

Rumba is a family of percussive rhythms, song and dance that originated in Cuba as a combination of the musical traditions of Africans brought to Cuba as slaves and Spanish colonizers. The name derives from the Cuban Spanish word rumbo which means "party" or "spree". It is secular, with no...

, American rhythm and blues

Rhythm and blues

Rhythm and blues, often abbreviated to R&B, is a genre of popular African American music that originated in the 1940s. The term was originally used by record companies to describe recordings marketed predominantly to urban African Americans, at a time when "urbane, rocking, jazz based music with a...

, and British pop music

Pop music

Pop music is usually understood to be commercially recorded music, often oriented toward a youth market, usually consisting of relatively short, simple songs utilizing technological innovations to produce new variations on existing themes.- Definitions :David Hatch and Stephen Millward define pop...

.

Partial discography

• Ujamaa: The 1960s Sound of Tanzania, Buda Musique 860142
• Mbaraka Mwinshehe Mwaruka Soloist National 1968-1972, Tamasha CD TAM501
• Mbaraka Mwinshehe & Morogoro Jazz Masimango (Best of Tanzania 1969-72), Dizim