The Culture and People of Swahili Tribe in East Africa.

TYPES OF ART

Swahili art forms are limited to architecture, furniture, and personal adornment. The great carved wooden doors of the coast are displayed as a sign of wealth.

Another cultural aspect of the Swahili is their use of arts and crafts, which they find significance in. When creating art, they express themselves through creativity as well as through shape and function. Some multicultural influences can be seen in Swahili art, furniture, and architecture.  They do not often use designs with images of living beings due to their Muslim heritage. Instead, Swahili designs are primarily geometric. There are important clothes that are part of their arts and crafts such as the Kanga . The Kanga is not only a rectangular piece of cloth but is an artifact of the Swahili culture. The cloth should be made with extreme care. If the cloth doesn’t match the season then it doesn’t deserve to be a Kanga and can be used as a baby diaper or an apron for the kitchen. Even though the Kanga is quite cheap, it is still a main part of Swahili culture. The Kanga is made in Tanzania and is mostly appealing to woman rather than men but men are not restricted to using it. The cloth is used as a sling to carry babies, melons on their heads and can also be used as a kitchen apron.

HISTORY

Swahili culture is the product of the history of the coastal part of the African Great Lakes region. As with the Swahili language, Swahili culture has a Bantu core that has borrowed from foreign influences.

 

The inhabitants of the coastal areas of Kenya, Tanzania, and Mozambique share history, language, and cultural traditions, which some Swahili scholars claim date to at least 100 A.D., when an anonymous Greek traveler and author of The Periplus of the Erytharaean Sea wrote about a place in east Africa, which Arabs frequented to trade with those living on the mainland. This history is closely tied to Indian Ocean trade routes linking India, the Arabian Peninsula, and Africa. Despite the shared history and language of the peoples of the Swahili Coast, it remains difficult to describe a discreet Swahili culture. This is not to suggest that a Swahili culture does not exist, but instead that its boundaries are amorphous, changing whenever necessary to meet the demands of everyday life.