Update #1: Happy Tanzanian Independence Day!

Hi everyone! Today is the 50th Anniversary of Tanzanian Independence, so I decided to take a minute to say thanks to all of our backers so far for caring about the endangered archives of Radio Tanzania Dar es Salaam.

I think it’s especially important on this day to recognize what a beautiful and wonderful thing it is that Tanzania has remained a peaceful, stable country since independence, and I think that Radio Tanzania Dar-es-Salaam played a pretty big role in that. How? Well, Julius K. Nyerere, the first president of Tanzania, famously said, “”In Tanzania, it was more than one hundred tribal units which lost their freedom; it was one nation that regained it.” He used Radio Tanzania as a tool for promoting unity and a sense of national pride through music.

So the music you are helping to preserve isn’t just fun to listen and dance to–it’s music that created peace, pride, and rebirth for a people who had been oppressed and exploited by colonialism for hundreds of years.

A fun fact: TV didn’t come to Tanzania til the mid-90’s, so for many years, radio was the predominate form of entertainment. Radio Tanzania captures a nation’s story from it’s birth all the way through the recent decades. And if you ask me, that is certainly a story worth preserving and sharing with the world.

Thank you again and let’s keep going!