Memoirs of an Arabian Princess

This album takes its title from a 19th-century autobiography by Emily Ruete. Born Sayyida Salme, the daughter of the Sultan of Zanzibar and Oman, she married a German merchant and went to live in Hamburg. This CD is a sort of evocation of memories of Zanzibar. Taarab is the distinctive music there, here provided by the slimmed-down ensemble of qanun (zither) player Rajab Suleiman & Kithara. But alongside it is rootsier kidumbak music and devotional Sufi singing from Tarbiyya Islamiyya and the wonderful Mtendi Maulid Ensemble chanting and swaying over insistent drumming. These are interleaved with soundscapes of the sea, a storm and most spectacularly the sound of simultaneous calls to prayer from the many mosques of Stone Town overtaken by the sound of a church choir. But they seem rather cursory – generalised street sounds rather than vivid close-ups – and some of the music recordings, particularly the kidumbak of the Sina Chuki group is focused on the percussion rather than the violin or vocals of Makame Faki. As an evocation of Zanzibar, it is not quite vivid enough.