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Small Things Fall From The Baobob Tree

The Zawose Family

This CD traces an extraordinary legacy of African music, as one musical legend passes and the door opens on a new era. Recorded at Real World Studios and at radio station in Seattle a number of these songs are the last ever recordings of the great Hukwe Zawose and his uniquely talented nephew Charles before their untimely deaths. The CD also introduces the voice of the new generation - the young Zawose Family –rapturous, joyous, polyphonic singing accompanying buzzing thumb pianos, soaring izeze fiddle and exuberant rhythms.

Peter Gabriel said Hukwe Zawose’s music was “some of the most beautiful music we have ever put out on Real World Records” and invited him to be the support act for the 2003 “Growing Up” tour of North America. This was to be Hukwe’s last trip abroad. On returning to Tanzania at the end of 2003 he died suddenly of AIDS followed only one year later by Charles.

Inspite of the hardships this devastation has brought to the family, the music has survived – the house in Bagamoyo is still buzzing with sound, possibly more than before as conscious mortality makes what is left over even more sacred. There is a new energy in the family learning from the bad times and building for a better future for the whole family and its music – a music that will never be lost.

Small Things Fall From the Baobab Tree’ will be sold in support of the Zawose Foundation which aims to support traditional musicians and artists in the Bagamoyo region of Tanzania. The organisation is founded in memory of the late Dr Hukwe Zawose - Tanzania's foremost master of traditional Wagogo music.