[6] Mtumwa binti Saadi relocated to Zanzibar Town in 1911, fourteen years after the abolition of slavery, in quest of better employment possibilities, more personal freedom, and a place to start over in life.
The population of Ng' ambo more than doubled between 1890 and 1930 as tens of thousands of people, including Siti, left the rural plantations and relocated to the city.
[6][8] Mtumwa binti Saadi and others quickly learned, however, that despite the town's limited chances for increased autonomy, prior systems of class, ethnic, and gender oppression continued to shape their lives fundamentally.
Her ability to portray the joys and tragedies of daily life in Ng' ambo through song, as well as her determination to use her performance to denounce acts of injustice that her friends and neighbors were exposed to, were the foundations of her success.
Both the music of Siti's band and the daily lives of the people of Ng'ambo were replete with poverty, the conceited superiority of the ruling class, and the abuses of British colonial tribunals.
[6] She frequently sang religious and secular songs at the weddings and festivals of the prominent families of Swahili coast of Tanzania during this time, which helped her become well-known outside of Ng'ambo.
[5] Although the Zanzibari aristocracy may have perceived her role at these festivities as that of the singing slave girl, in the written folklore she is praised for mixing with the most prominent figures in Swahili culture.
She got gifts of silks, embroidered clothing, and gold jewellery, and the payment she received for one performance for these affluent guests was more than what the average urban worker would make in a year.
In the following several years, albums targeted at hitherto untapped markets were promoted globally as international recording corporations began to cautiously recognise the potential purchasing power of black listeners.
[6] Overwhelmed by their initial success—especially in light of the pitiful Rs 64 (roughly TZS 100 at the time) that had been spent to advertise and promote these first recordings—HMV invited Siti and her band back to Bombay for another session in March 1929.
But as Wemer Graebner has claimed, colonial administrators and missionaries in East Africa, who promoted Swahili taarab as a more "developed" and "civilised" kind of music, also had a significant impact on the practises of business executives.
[6] The newly formed business, EMI, sent a representative to East Africa to look into the current situation and potential futures of gramophone promotion following the merger of HMV, Odeon, Pathe, and Columbia in 1931.
The well-known Swahili poet Shaaban Robert described her songs as "the pride of East Africa" and her recordings as "a great light in the darkness" left for future generations.
The commercial selling of Siti's voice contributed to the development of the Zanzibari dialect of Kiswahili, which the British later promoted as "standard" Swahili throughout East Africa.
Siti's recorded voice served as a metaphor for Zanzibar's influence as a modernising force that disseminated taarab music and new technology from Tanganyika to Southern Arabia, Uganda, Kenya, the Belgian Congo, and Somalia.
The majority of Zanzibaris lived in households that couldn't afford a gramophone, let alone the new records that were released on a monthly basis and whose average price was more than twice that of an unskilled urban labourer.
The fact that "one of their own" (i.e. poor, black, and Kiswahili speaking) had been recorded rather than one of the bands from Stonetown that sung in Arabic, the language of the island's despised aristocracy, elevated the stature of even those without a gramophone.
[6][7][3] In the 1920s and 1930s, Siti's residence in Ng'ambo became into a hub of activity where she joked, swapped rumours, assessed local politics, and gathered new lyrics for her songs.
[6][7] Although vocal requests for "fairness" from the colonial government frequently met with resistance, community discussions of what "justice" meant also found expression in jailbreaks and in Siti's band's music.
Numerous of these songs are still well-remembered today, and when they are performed, they frequently serve to reaffirm memories of the bloody conflicts that pitted the African poor against Asian and Arab landowners as well as the colonial government.
[6][8] The conviction of Mselem bin Mohamed el-Khalasi, a wealthy and influential Arab civil official headquartered in Zanzibar Town, was satirically "honoured" in one of Siti's songs, Wala Hapana Hasara.
During a particularly turbulent time in the late 1920s, when Ng'ambo people organised a ground rent strike that led to multiple conflicts with the state, he was also despised for his role as a government informant.
[6][3] When Mselem was later found guilty of stealing money from government accounts in order to pay for his daughter's wedding, many in Ng'ambo believed that God was atoning for the wrongs that he had done against them over the years.
Women were routinely advised by European court authorities that their own immoral behaviour was the root of their issues in cases of rape and domestic abuse.
[6][8][3] After testifying against Kijiti in court, two ladies who assisted in organising the expedition and providing the booze for it were found guilty of the woman's death (some reports indicate they were condemned to hang).
In addition to being horrified by the court's decision, this song implies that Ng' ambo locals also had their own theories about what justice would ultimately dole out to Kijiti.
[6][3] Siti binti Saad rose from the oppressed classes to make taarab music her vehicle, calling for social justice in what is now Tanzania.
She protested against class oppression and men's abuse of women; her song "The Police has Stopped" sharply criticized a judge who let a rich wife-murderer go free.
[6][3] Siti binti Saadi may have been a significant historical person, but not because her voice was recorded and sold from Zanzibar to Kinshasa, but rather because her songs captured the lives, the thoughts, and the problems of their day.