An assessment of language choice in the contemporary Tanzanian music

Abstract

This study presents an assessment of language choice in the contemporary Tanzanian music. The study was guided by three objectives namely; to assess language trend in the Tanzanian music as from 1980s up to now, to investigate the factors for language choice as well as finding the impact of language choice in music to Tanzanian society. The study was conducted in Dar es Salaam city and Same district in Kilimanjaro region involving musicians, producers and distributors of Tanzanian music. Tools employed in collecting data for this study were interviews and questionnaires comprising of closed and open-ended questions as well as the documentary review. The analysis of data was mainly descriptive and comparative. The findings of the study revealed that the contemporary Tanzanian music employ code switching done in two languages Kiswahili and English and in rare cases the switch is between Kiswahili and ethnic community languages. Lexical borrowing from English and the use of non-standard Kiswahili in the songs’ lyrics were also evident.