African music – listen in!

There is something about African rhythms and harmonies that delights my ear. I hear it in Brian Kieran’s video of St Jude’s which features the clear voices of the children in many places.

In recent years these rhythms, tunes and harmonies have come to the wide world through performers like Paul Simon and through the whole World Music scene. Now, of course, we have Web 2.0 with its user-generated content.

A great place for musical browsing is YouTube. You can drop in there and put ‘Tanzania’ into the search box to find the latest works tagged ‘Tanzania’. Try it again for ‘Tanzanie’ and you’ll get a slightly different crop of works.

Here’s a favourite of mine from this past week. The clip is titled the Best Swahili Church Song Ever. It has been viewed 3,900 times and favourited 22 times – so there are lot of people who like this kind of music!



The School of St Jude aims to support the best elements of Tanzanian culture, while introducing some core Australian values. Music is a strong element in Tanzanian culture and it is great to see it weaving its way through school life at St Jude’s.



Click here to subscribe to this blog.