The Urbanization of Zanzibar

Fair focuses not on the political and sparingal changes in the status of these town-dwelling Africans but kind of on the hearty and cultural aspects of their lives (which were of course related to the changing stinting basis of the tillage). She is particularly interested in the ways in which Africans "performed" their in the raw identities as free people, and how their conception of themselves as free people was linked to (and in some cases snub by) concepts of gender identity.

Fair emphasizes the ways in which cultural and pop-cultural realms became politicized for mordant Zanzibaris, arguing that "pastimes and politics were not discrete categories of experience in the lives of Siti's contemporaries; they were intimately connected" (p. 9). Because of this, she notes, her goal in symphonyal composition this book is "to integrate 'traditional' historical accounts of changes in social status, economic patterns, and colonial politics with a less traditional enquiry of changes in dance, music, fashion and sport" (p. 9).

Her story of Zanzibar at the put to work of the last century is that of a marginalized group of people (for unconstipated after Zanzibarans of Africa descent gained their freedom in 1897 they remained poor and in most(prenominal) ways politically marginalized) sought to create a sense of self that was em top executiveing. Because they were poor and so barred from economic power and because political power on the island was held primarily by the British, the

Among the types of performances that were most valued and most effective in terms of redefining identity were performances of popular music, including the music of Siti binti Saad, perhaps still the most celebrated Zanzibari singer, who transformed the musical theater tradition of Taarab into the voice of resistance.

Siti binti Saad along with her band, which included fiddlers, lute-players and drummers, "used their skills as performers to give poetic form to the often trenchant critiques of economic and political power that circulated in Ng'ambo during the period between the ii world wars" (p. 167).

Another key arena of popular culture in which Zanzibaris demonstrated their newly found freedoms - and expressed their want for independence from British colonial rule - was in sports, and curiously in football (or soccer) in which team alliances and player networks became both allegories for the desire for a free Zanzibar but also social networks in which individuals actively worked towards that independence.

Among the most important element of this new dressing-like-Zanzibaris was the use of kanga cloth, which is a rectangle of cotton, with brightly colored designs with a reverberate that are usually worn as a tally in a wrap-around garment called a doti. The name of the cloth comes from the Swahili word for guineafowl - who are as brightly colored as the cloth (and are supposed to be as ineffectual as a woman with a new dress). The boldly colored cloths were nothing like the drab garments that slaves had been forced to wear.

that effective means that most Zanzibaris had to increase their personal power was through cultural, artistic, and pop cultural avenues. Much of Fair's resea
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