Connect to share and comment Innovative project to digitize
historic music and speeches from reel-to-reel tapes. DAR ES
SALAAM, Tanzania — Fifty years after Tanzania's independence, an
innovative, crowd-funded project is working to preserve the
nation's history and music. Tanzania was at the cutting edge of
Africa's struggle against colonialism and white minority-rule,
and the nation's music became famous for mixing traditional
rhythmns and harmonies with electric guitars. Key political
milestones and vital African music recorded and broadcast by
Radio Tanzania are now on reel-to-reel tapes filed away in a
building behind Dar es Salaam’s railroad tracks. The radio, part
of the state-owned Tanzania Broadcasting Corporation, has more
than 100,000 hours of unreleased tapes holding ethnographic
recordings, afro-jazz dance music and political speeches used to
fuel support for independence movements across Africa, stored on
the dusty shelves. The recordings, which chronicle the rise of a
nation, have languished for