Hyena Square

Bongo Flava music! As it sounded in 2005, when we shot "Hyena Square" in Dar es Salaam. "Flava" is flavor. "Bongo" has to do with the swahili word for brain substance, "ubongo". I think it was legendary musician Remy Ongala who started calling Dar es Salaam "Bongo" sometime in the eighties. Because if you're poor you need to "chemsha bongo", boil your brains, be really clever, to survive in this four-million city. Today the hip-hop inspired Bongo Flava music scene is huge and diverse, and reaches the entire Swahili world.

If you want to pay for these songs, you can download them all for $8. Half of that goes to our web-hosting bill, the other half to the musicians. If we can find them. If not we donate their $0.5 per song to the "Elisa Youth Group".