“Kuishi kwingi ni kuona mengi.”

(To live long is to see much) - Swahili proverb

The writer and musician Freddy Macha (pronounced “Matcha”) was born on the slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro and grew up in the highlands of north Tanzania. He was a reporter for the national Swahili daily paper Uhuru and popular weekly columnist for Sunday News until 1984.

In 1981 he received a BBC Poetry Prize. His first collection of Swahili stories Twen’zetu Ulaya were published in 1984 and immeaditely reprinted due to a great demand. After a European tour with Sayari the Tanzanian music-poetry group he co-founded in 1980, he lived in Germany & went to Brazil where he played with Os Galas band in Rio up to 1992.

Between 1998 to 2001 Freddy hosted and promoted weekly World Music Nights at the Spanish Bar Lorca in London where he is resident since 1996. He still writes regular columns in the Tanzanian media , while leading workshops, recording, performing Solo or with his Kitoto Band.