The music of Zanzibar is the music of intrigue. Innuendo veils its Swahili poetry as mysteriously as a black buibui drapes an Arabic woman. Its rhythms pulse with beats so joyous and insistent they could only be African. Strumming of the oud, a lute, and the taishokoto, a zither, punctuate the wailing of Western violins and cellos as a keyboard player rocks on an electric piano. "Tariba" means "moved and agitated" in Arabic, and taarab has become the leading music of its native Zanzibar. The best places to hear it are the Culture Music Club in Zanzibar City and Ikhawani Safaa in Stone Town, the old section of Zanzibar City.

Taarab began as wedding music. At boisterous parties for women only --men have their own smaller, quieter celebrations -- the guests celebrate a consummated marriage and toast the bride. Taarab offers a way for women to poke fun at each other by requesting songs with bawdy or teasing lyrics. Sometimes they use the musicians to communicate with each other by dancing up to the lead singer at a significant moment in the lyrics, then giving her money to show their support for an idea or their criticism of some other person at the party. Deliberately offensive lyrics, called mipasho, or "back-biting," are a favored taarab tradition that extends to rivalries between bands.

Taarab poetry is tricky to understand, even for those fluent in Arabic-laced Swahili. The lyrics harbor private meanings and allegorical symbols that may be known only to the writer or a small group of friends. For example, the following song is not really about sailing. It is the story of a husband who leaves his house, fed up with the fighting between his two wives over their rights in a polygamous household.

I encountered something amazing,a war on the sea,
A shoving and pushing has occurred,
and me I'm in the boat,
The captains have a war, they fight for the rudder.
They show strength to each other,
the fighting captains,
And their rudder is rotten,
and they have already cut the sail,
But with all their might, they are fighting the wheel.
Me I leave the sea, I cannot stand their fighting,
Whenever I think I can see their end,
It will be that the nails will come
to be far from the boards.

Taarab may be almost impossible to understand, or it may incite the crowd. In any event, this music sung by a woman with a high, clear voice, accompanied by captivating rhythms of tabla drums and tambourines, mellowed by the sultry whine of violins played in Indian style, promises an evening of exotic entertainment.