In urban area of Tanzania, the communities of native Africans are invariably made up of various ethnic groups or tribes from all over the country. These urban dwellers have been forming inter-tribal relationship through various kinds of cultural activities. In particular, popular music and football have been flourishing throughout Tanzania since the British colonial period. Because of their wide popularity, these two main fields of popular culture have been functioning as a driving force to organize or mobilize the people irrespective of their tribe or religion. As a consequence, popular music and football have always had a close connection with urban politics in Tanganyika (mainland Tanzania), especially in its capital, Dar es Salaam.
From the 1930s to 1950s, Kariakoo area, the oldest settlement of native Africans in Dar es Salaam, was one of the centers of modern musical activities of urban Africans in Tanganyika. There were two main genres of popular music: taarab and jazz. Taarab is said to have originated in Zanzibar under the direct influence of Arab modern music, and became very popular among Swahili people of the East African coast and islands. In East Africa and Zaire, jazz denotes a style of dance music originally formed under the influence of Cuban music rumba in the 1940-50s, and later developed mainly in Zaire with its peculiar guitar style.
In Kariakoo area, both the first taarab group (Egyptian Musical Club) and the first jazz band (Dar es Salaam Jazz Band) in Tanganyika were formed in the 1930s. Yanga and Sunderland (now Simba), which have been the most prominent football clubs in Tanganyika over fifty years up to now, were also founded in Kariakoo in the late 1930s. Besides, the African Association, the first political organization for Africans, was formed in Kariakoo in 1929 by influential townsmen such as civil servants and landowners. The association transformed into the Tanganyika African National Union (TANU) later, and played a crucial role in the struggle for independence through the 1950s. Thus, by the 1950s, Kariakoo had become the cultural and political center not only of Dar es Salaam but also of the whole country.
Such popular movements developed on the basis of a rather close-knit urban community, namely Kariakoo, where people could sustain face-to-face communication. The spread of Swahili language and culture through the first half of this century contributed greatly to create a social base for these multi-ethnic social activities in this geographically compact area.
Throughout the period, there was a close interplay among these musical clubs, football teams, and political parties. In particular, during the time of the struggle against the colonial government, a lot of popular bands and teams came to cooperate closely with TANU for the common purpose of independence, by enhancing people to take part in the political campaign. This fact implies that these musical and sporting organizations provided the townsmen including many migrant workers with more suitable and effective communal bases than any other tribal or religious organizations in urban area at that time.