Mrisho Mpoto : “Mjomba” of poetry, Swahili culture through music

Music is one among arts with a great influence here in Tanzania as elsewhere, an art whose growth has been fast. Currently, there are many youths who opt to make music part of their life and they make a living from it. With such growth, Tanzania has many music groups, traditionally called jazz bands, and smaller solo artistes especially among the 'new generation' musicians. The latter are mainly youths engaging in rough and  tumble sort of music, 'Bongo Flavor' mainly and then its cousins in rhythm and blues, or again hip hop. Music is business. But it's not only a business. It's part of who we are and how we express ourselves. It's not just about money. It's about people. Music express Culture, it  exists to celebrate those parts of contemporary popular music that are not simply about returning a profit, but are about our cities, our heritage, our shared experience and ourselves as people. But in  real sense most musicians in Tanzania do not present our culture as the styles used are similar to other countries the world over. Tanzanian musicians imitate DRC beats and earlier, America as despite not being part of our culture, these cultures also grew out of African beats exported across the seas. That is why no one can say they have their own music. However there is cultural pressure to be authentic, and one such stalwart is Mrisho Mpoto, a recently emerged Tanzanian artist who sees as acutely important the need to promote Kiswahili internationally. This can be done by using its own unique style of narrating poetry, something that makes it easy to recognize him as a champion of local music. He is one among the few musicians who succeed to draw attention of their audiences, as professionally he is doing theatre performance and music is part of it. So Mrisho Mpoto takes that side of it though he describes his style as contemporary African music, the kind of music which contains different tastes of African culture, using different vernaculars around Tanzania, and presenting it orally – which is really what African culture is all about. He uses different African art material with the aim of promoting local languages because we have enough  languages but who knows that?  He says he wants all world to know we are rich in languages and there is no need to borrow languages from outside. In his music one cannot find a foreign language word included, he swears to that. You can describe him as the Swahili ambassador because he succeeds to present Kiswahili all over the world through his poetic style narrating in Swahili, mixing with other vernaculars. Mrisho Mpoto has travelled in many countries including the United States, Sweden, Germany, France and many other countries in the five continents. He become a winner of the Reunion slum poetry championship in 2008 for the whole of Africa, after which Mrisho succeeded to establish a traditional dancers group which goes together with his own show through his music band that was introduced last year. One major step he has taken is forming a music band that he owns, as he decided to have a music band of his style in order to give his audience what he can offer, authentically. He has more fans each passing day, and they like to meet with him face to face. Lots of people listen to his music and they need to hear it in live band fashion, “that's why I decide to introduce my band, called Mjomba Band,” he said. His music changes according to whom he is talking to. If he speaks to cultivated audience he provides a narration suited for them, and sometimes even in routine talk he can narrate automatically without prior preparation but in a balanced way, and that is what called talent. Speaking on talent he has lots of poetry crammed in his head including Titi la mama litamu from Shaaban Robert and others, which has 50 verses. He acknowledges he has special talent and is a professional story teller, saying he narrates his music with more inspiration and he also wears the character inside him. “There is Mrisho Mpoto and another side of Mrisho Mpoto when you find me in my work,” he declares. He has the passion of doing theatre performances since he was a child, with a childhood spent at the University of Dar es Salaam. “I lived in campus premises for more than ten years since I were in primary school and at times I used even to enter in classes and listen to lectures. I am glad about that because in the 50 years anniversary of the University of Dar es Salaam I was awarded as a member  of the university,” he said. “It is cultural expansion so I expect to promote our tourism as well. I will tell them what is Tanzania doing as well, as we are going to play a book called African kills her son,” Mrisho said. Mrisho says he plans to produce a lot of poems so he expects that in five years this type of art will be more popular as it is now a new thing in Tanzania. He started on that idea he introduced at the Dar es Salaam Festival for poetry, and each year four winners go to France for further competition. He says he faced lots of challenges when he started because poetry  was a new thing. “I was thinking on how people can take this style but at last I succeeded to deliver it to audiences and people accept it, so now I enjoy my work and do it with passion,” he added.