Eisenberg Collection

The Andrew Eisenberg Collection of East African Commercial Sound Recordings contains sound files and associated metadata for hundreds of commercial sound recordings produced for East African audiences between the late 1920s and the first decade of the twenty-first century. NYUAD Assistant Professor of Music and MaSC founding member Andrew J. Eisenberg collected the materials in Mombasa, Kenya, between 2004 and 2006, with the assistance of local collector Jamal Hafidh Jahadhmy. Most of the sounds in the collection fall within the realm of Swahili-language urban popular music. There are also examples of rural music traditions, colonial-era martial music, recited Swahili poetry, and Swahili comedy sketches.