We found out that many people in both of our two countries care much about music, although the music in these two countries are found for some reasons similar and they really unite us together, we also found out that there are few differences between the taste of our music.
In Germany, music is rather used to identify yourself with a certain subgroup. In contrast, music in Tanzania is part of a national identity to which everyone can connect. When a song is played, everyone knows the lyrics and vibes with the music. But when you propose a song in Germany, you can be sure of some people complaining and others being overly excited. Mixed feelings are not only apparent as a reaction to song proposals in Germany. We feel like German music portrays a wider range of emotions in general. Tanzanian music is very positive, energetic and encourages people to dance. We were also surprised by how much more dancing is embedded in Tanzanian culture than in German culture.
"We Tanzanians love music like Amapiano, Bongo Fleva, Singeli, which all of them are hyped and high vibes even if sometimes they might talk about sadness, on the other hand in this exchange program we learned that our fellow have different taste of music which is slow and we found it really hard to adapt and cope to this style of music". - Abdulshakur
"It is very common in Tanzania that all people are aware of the trending songs at least". - Petronila
"Our music has several ways of dancing. and usually each song comes with its own style of dancing, which becomes very unique and common to almost all people in the country". - Emmanuel
Even though everyone has a different connection to music, it really connects and unites us as a group and it gives us the opportunity to share moments full of joy.
Authors: Emmanuel Vicent, Abdulshakur Abdilah, Oda Kandler, Petronila Raphael, Aron Köhl
Photo: Oda Kandler
Video edit: Emilia Huppenberger