The osmotic relationship between oral and written literature has been neglected for a long time by literary criticism in post-independence Tanzania: the development of new genres and the related debates about literary values have until the end of the Eighties mostly attracted the attention of the scholars, making thus marginal the study of oral literature until the recent awakening of critical studies. Residual were especially those oral forms, like contemporary oral poetry, not wholly ´traditional` - coming from a pre-colonial past or alluding to unchanging features -, nor enough `modern` and `progressive` to be assigned much interest in scholarship. This paper is a tentative to approach the question from a different perspective, presenting the case of one kind of oral poetry - taarab songs - , which has been dealt within creative writing, from the pre-independence era until our days - creative literature, being not bound to categorising and coherence as criticism is, sometimes succeeding better than a too `scientifically- oriented` criticism in containing the subtle relations between opponents, like orality and writing, tradition and modernity, elite and popular arts. In the following pages I will discuss three Swahili prose works, namely Wasifu wa Siti Binti Saad by Shaaban Robert (1958), Utengano by S.A Mohamed (1980) and Siku njema by K. Walibora (1996), in which taarab appears in the narration- both thematically and stylistically -, evidencing the continuities but also stressing the different ways in which symbolism and literary techniques are employed by the authors.

The aim of this article is to deal with reduplication in Swahili. In phase I, we pay attention to the process of reduplication as such, i.e., we try to define this phenomenon and we determine the scope of our study. The core of phase II is constituted by the examination of formal properties of reduplication in Swahili. Phase III contains the investigation of the phenomenon in question from the functional perspective. In the next phase, we concentrate on the so-called `pseudoreduplication` since we are convinced that this feature of Swahili morphology is quite important in relation to reduplication. The last phase is devouted to the analysis of a set of concrete examples from a work of fiction which illustrates the issues discussed in previous phases. Although this study is intended to be an intralanguage one, we do not restrain omselves from occassional interlanguage comparisons since it is our belief that any contrastive comparison can contribute to a better understanding of the phenomenon concerned. The synchronic point of view is applied throughout the whole study.

In the traditional Swahili literature description has a secondary role. Characters` portrayals are limited to a few stereotyped attributes, because they represent types, not individualized characters The model of women`s beauty is taken from Arabic literature: round face, black, flowing hair, big eyes, teeth like pealls with beautiful gaps in between, slender neck... This model is valid to a large extent also in modern novels.. Thus, the complexion of an ideal woman is as clear as possible; even up-rountry heroines are often light-roloured `as a half-cast` or at least bronzed. They are preferably of medium height, lump, but with a slender waist and well-shaped legs.

This lively poem, one of several hundred collected in Mombasa at the end of the nineteenth century by W.E T AYLOR thanks to Mwalimu SIKUJUWA bin ABDALLAH ai-BAIAWI (Frankl, 1993), is preserved in Volume Ill of the Taylor Papers, now in the library of the School of Oriental & African Studies (SOAS) in London.. lt consists of two versions - both in Arabic script (SOAS MS 47754); the first (Section X, page 4) is probably in the hand of ABDALLAH bin RASHID and has fifteen stanzas, while the second (Section Z, page 161) is in the hand of Mwalimu SIKUJUWA (one of T AYLOR\''s two Swahili teachers) and has twenty-one stanzas .. The entire text of version X is to be found in Z, although not in the same order. Version Z has thus six additional stanzas, and we have had no hesitation in selecting it as the text for this article (the manuscript having been most probably commissioned by TAYLOR).

Between 1977 and 1980 I collected a nuber of texts on the northern Kenya coast Most were tape recorded by myself fiom oral performances, a few were written down or recorded by others Most of the current collection consists of texts gathered so, plus: the Mwiini material, provided by Chuck Kisseberth, originally provided or recorded in Barawa by M I. Abasheikh, and the Bajuni \"contemporary\" verse, taken form a publicly available cassette-recording by AM. Msallarn in the 1970.

This paper presents an edited version of a handwritten text in Shaba Swahili and French, accompanied by an English translation. The original text was written in ballpoint by a Shaba Zairean ex-houseboy, and sent to his former employer in Belgium. It provides an account of his life, with special focus on the period after his Belgian employers left Zaire in 1973. It documents the conditions of hardship in the life of a semi-educated Zairean and provides a detailed account of the migrations he has to undertake in order to find means to support himself and his family. The author wrote the `recit` at the request of the former employer`s wife, as a symbolic way to repay the debt he had incurred over the years in which he had received money and other goods from the Belgian lady. The text was sent to me by the former employer, who asked me to translate it into Dutch. The former employer granted me the permission to edit and publish the text in its totality. For reasons of privacy, we decided to alter the names of the people mentioned in the text. Thus, for instance, the employer is named Andni Deprins, his wife (who is the central addressee of the text) Helena Arens, and the author of the text is identified as Julien.

Taarab is a style of music performed all along the Swahili coast at weddings and on other celebratory occasions. It is arguably the most important type of entertainment music played in this region, and it is certainly prevalent in Zanzibar, where it has come to be considered part of the very characterisation of the island itself: this is the island of cloves, the island of slaves and `the island of tawab` (Seif Salim Saleh, lecture at the African Music Village Holland Park, London, July 18, 1985)

There are many different traditional costumes in the world. In Zanzibar, a Swahili man is said to be fully attired when he puts on an embroidered cap, locally known as kofia ya viua or just kofia, robe (kanzu) with a coat, and sandals taking a Swahili name of makubadhi. The Kofia is round-shaped with a flat top, adorned with embroidered designs all over For convenience of simplicity in classification kofia are divided into two main groups, simple designed and complex-designed caps.

Aliyetunga kasiga hii, Sheikh Abgallah al-Husni, alikuwa ni mtu maarufu sana Mombasa .. Kwa muda wa myaka arobaini takriban alikuwa akisomesha elimu za gini, msikiti wa Anisa, Mjuwakale; piya alikuwa akitoa waadhi msikiti huu na mahali pengine .. Antunga kasiga mbili za waadhi, moja katika hizo ndiyo hii tuliyoishereheya katika makala haya .. W akati wa kutungwa waadhi huu - 1368 (mwaka 1948 wa milagi) - Mombasa ilikuwa ikali mji wa kiSawahili, yaani mji wa kilsilamu; lakini kulikuwa kuna mabadiliko makubwa yaanza, mabadiliko ambayo mwisho yanaondowa sura za uSawahili katika Mombasa na pwani nzima ya Afrika ya mashariki.

Für das Swahili liegt eine Menge zweisprachiger Worterbucher mit der Ausgangssprache Swahili vor, weniger in umgekehrter Richtung. Die ersten bedeutenden lexikographischen Arbeiten wurden von Missionar L. Krapf seit der Mitte des 19 Jahrhunderts vor allem in Mombasa durchgeführt. 1982 erschien sein Dicitonary of the Swahili Language. Inzwischen gibt es Wörterbucher mit den Zielsprachen Englisch, Deutsch, F ranzosisch, Russisch, Schwedisch, ltalienisch, Polnisch, Tschechisch, Gujerati, Japanisch, Arabisch und anderen.