Bongo Flava

Bongo flava is the popular music of urban Tanzania, named for Dar es Salaam — 'Bongo', from the Swahili ubongo, 'brain', a nickname implying the cleverness needed to survive the city. Formed in the mid-1990s by young performers absorbing American hip hop and R&B, Jamaican dancehall and Afrobeat into local matrices of taarab and dansi, it is sung and rapped mostly in Swahili over programmed beats, with melodic hooks as prominent as verses. *Professor Jay* gave the style early social-realist weight, *Ali Kiba* its romantic R&B wing, and *Diamond Platnumz* carried it to continental scale in the 2010s.