Mzee Waziri Omari Nyange: a story of intervention in Tanzanian nation-building with guitar music, sung Swahili poems and healing

Drawing on private papers and interviews conducted between 2009 and 2015, this article analyses the Swahili lyrics (mashairi) of three of the twelve songs or sung poems composed between the mid-2000s and 2015 by Mzee Waziri Omari Nyange (born 1936), a Muslim man of peasant origins who was once a solo guitarist with the renowned Cuban Marimba Jazz Band, a craftsperson and a herbalist. He is still active as a healer, promoter of Tanzanian culture and composer of didactic lyrics accompanied by tunes for guitar music (muziki wa dansi). Two of the three unrecorded and typewritten compositions presented here are on HIV/AIDS; one is on witchcraft. Lyrics largely conform to longstanding Swahili/Islamic moral principles and converge with the government's ideology. But they also at times depart from them and present innovative views. Notwithstanding their restricted audience or lack thereof, these compositions serve to illustrate that Mzee Nyange's concerns with individual and national well-being are intertwined. By showing some of the ways in which one outstanding individual of humble social level has been keenly participating in the process of guiding the community in hidden ways, this article claims that Mzee Nyange's life history and artistic production can shed light on the everyday process of self-making and nation-building in Tanzania.