Back in 2017 as the label was busy finding its feet, the Kampala-based outsider bastion Nyege Nyege Tapes introduced the world to the Sounds of Sisso, whose upstart studio in the Mburahati ghetto on the outskirts of Dar es Salaam was pioneering the breakneck speeds and interlocking rhythms of singeli. Sounds of Sisso helped to put both the producer and the label on the map, establishing Dar es Saleem and its singeli scene as a hotspot for cutting-edge contemporary dance music.
By digitising the patterns of taarab – which originated on the island of Zanzibar as a fusion of Swahili tunes and Middle Eastern rhythms before Siti binti Saad and her successors brought the genre to popularity across the whole of Tanzania, and is traditionally played by acoustic ensembles with an accordion, violin, oud or qanun carrying the melody over tablah drums, maracas and claves and the sometimes dolorous tow of double bass or cello – and ratcheting up the tempo to more than 200 beats per minute, the singeli proffered by Sisso and his studio distinguished itself from both the hip hop-induced sound of bongo flava and the more pop-orientated stylings of early practitioners like Msaga Sumu. More than afrobeats, reggae or R&B, this radical singeli shares plenty in common with Chicago footwork and juke, the breakbeats of happy hardcore and the distorted kicks of gabber, Lisbon and PrĆncipe’s summatory batida sound which draws from kuduros, tarraxinha and zouk and modern fast-paced iterations of soca music.
Following the release of Sounds of Sisso, over the next few years Nyege Nyege Tapes returned to Dar es Salaam and Sisso Records to capture his fellow producers Bamba Pana and Jay Mitta, before hopping over to the neighbouring Pamoja Records for a game of compare and contrast by way of Duke’s punkish abrasions, temporal smears and diverse samples. More recently the dizzying cybernetics of DJ Travella have offered a new pathway for the sound, yet with Singeli Ya Maajabu the original honcho Sisso accompanied by Maiko on keys stakes his claim as still the form’s most deliriously intrepid innovator.
There’s a frantic and slightly unhinged yet breezily carefree, pitch-shifted buoyancy to Singeli Ya Maajabu as Sisso and Maiko drive the jerky rhythms of singeli rotor blades-spinning up through the atmosphere. The record kicks off with ‘Kivinje’ as a sort of plastic playhouse version of the ubiquitous Kingsmen classic ‘Louie Louie’. The music video for the track shows Sisso and Maiko upside down as they play pat-a-cake and hammer away at their Yamaha PSS-170 and MacBook keyboards, a disorientating image which is hard to shake as over the course of the album melodies seem to be cut up and stuck back together in the manner of a collage as beats squelch and ping from all directions.
From the sheer giddiness of ‘Kivinje’, the second track ‘Kazi Ipo’ carries the same dynamics but a more futuristic bent, the amateur reenactment of a gravity assist manoeuvre through spaceship blips and beeps, a ramshackle take on the stargate sequence from 2001: A Space Odyssey. Almost inevitably on first listen the aural onslaught of rapidly oscillating synths and polyrhythmic kicks begins to bleed together, with different tracks taking on the characteristics of mashups and remixes as Maiko’s keys provide a bit of local colour, playing out like iterations on a theme, variously taking in the environs of Dar es Salaam from the gleaming high-rises and cable bridges of the rapidly growing financial hub to the grimier outskirts and densely-packed former squats of Tandale and Manzese, elsewhere its teeming port, fish markets, marine reserves and abundance of sandy beaches.
‘Uhondo’ evokes the darker atmospherics of baile funk, especially the witchcraft of bruxaria with its shrill whistling tuin, while the rapt tumbling of ‘Kiboko’ with its electric piano stabs, tight bass lines and manically clopping mallet percussion is described as a ‘frothy tribute’ to Billboard powerhouses The Neptunes. Slapped with a big grin, the ebullient synths and pounding drum rolls of ‘Timua’ seem to capture the joy of dance within a neon forcefield, ‘Mangwale’ offers a momentary breather through stretched, melismatic choral vocals, whale-like and redolent of the Cocteau Twins, and ‘Rusha’ is an overdriven take on afrobeats spurred on by guttural Maasai chanting.
The keyboardist Maiko grew up in eastern Tanzania, near the city of Morogoro which is colloquially known as ‘mji kasoro bahari’ or ‘the city short of an ocean’. Perhaps inspired by his new surrounds, after relocating to Dar es Salaam and linking up with Sisso his work seems imperceptibly drawn towards both interstellar oddities and the aqueous depths, with ‘Jimwage’ bubbling under and bleating like the sonar of a submersible. On the spectral and shadowy ‘Mizuka’ a watery static is pummelled by crunching beats and industrial terraforming before their cup runneth over. ‘Njopeka’ with its helicopter ascent sounds like a whistle-stop tour through the rest of Singeli Ya Maajabu, a recapitulation of themes before the blades whir to a halt.
With the spring of a pogo stick ‘Shida’ takes the listener on an acid-fuelled trip, and ‘Zakwao’ serves as a celebratory escalator ride back down to earth replete with balloons and ticker tape. That leaves ‘Ganzi’ which closes Singeli Ya Maajabu as a techno-laced thumper, far from retreating inward or taking a victory lap riding a hoverboard and pumping both arms as an alien voice repeats ‘this is the sound of speed’, before zipping off in search of new horizons.
