Nyota - Black Star & Lucky Star Musical Club

In the 60's Black Star Musical Club took taarab along a different path by taking the rhythms from the dansi groups of the era,and also added the electric guitar, bass,

and ultimately the keyboard, and replaced the older taarab instruments like the oud,

the string double bass, and the harmonium.Black Star Musical Club developed a rivalry with a group

that broke off from it called Lucky Star Musical Club, also known as Nyota Njema, which means Lucky Star in Swahili. Throughout the 1970s and into the 1980s, these two bands warred with each other by singing songs

about each other, but always through the employ of metaphor.They would have very rarely sung

direct insults toward each other. Taarab, the poetic form, is well-known for its use of innuendo and metaphor

and multiple layers of meaning to talk about social life, and comment on social life.

In the seventies and eighties, Black Star and Lucky Star,became famous not only in Tanga.

It went far beyond that, because they were also recorded by studios not too far away in Mombasa,

just across the border in Kenya. Their recordings were played on Radio Tanzania, and also in Kenya,

on KBC, and the popularity of Black Star and Lucky Star spread throughout what is now Tanzania.

by Kelly Askew

Nyota