The Swahili Beat

The Swahili Beat is an upbeat look at the remarkable history of the Swahili people of East African coast (Kenya, Tanzania & Zanzibar).

Packed with the music and dance of its indigenous peoples, the film takes viewers along the coast from the fabled island of Lamu to Zanzibar, Mombasa, Kilwa, Bagamoyo, Tanga and Dar es Salaam, tracing the development of the Swahili culture through the intermarriage of Arab settlers, arriving from Oman in the 8th century, with local Africans.

The resulting Islamic hybrid culture cemented economic and social stability.

The emergence of the Swahili as prosperous merchant brokers in the Indian Ocean basin and in the growing East African slave trade made them a lucrative target for successive waves of settlers, invaders and colonizers, including the Persians, Indians, Portuguese, Arabs, Germans and British.

The Swahili have withstood all these invasions and maintained their Afro-Arab Islamic culture until today.

They absorbed all Invasions, by inter~marriage of settlers, and have Won thus Far.
Can they survive in the face of globalization, the Internet and tourism?