Zaramo people are considered influential in Tanzania popular culture, with musical genres like Sengeli originating from their community in Kinondoni District.

The Shomvi, a mercantile clan living in what is present-day Dar Es Salaam were attacked by an offshoot group of Kamba people from Kenya.

When missionary work began in the south after many Mwera and Makua stopped practicing Christianity, polygynous marriages and other barriers made it difficult for many converts to return, which led to Islam becoming the coastal area's major religion.

Both from the coast and up north from the Rufiji, where Zaramo tracked the boys' jando initiation ceremony that contributed significantly to the spread of Islam, proselytizing had taken place.

[12] A Zaramo Muslim immigrant worker named Abdulrahman Saidi Mboga is credited with introducing superior rice varieties and irrigation methods to South Pare.

The organisation was split throughout the 1930s between proponents of a territorial alliance of educated men and supporters of harmony between the various social classes in the city.

The British first established a Township Authority made up of selected Europeans and Asians before experimenting with a number of "native administrations."

It also revealed that several ethnic groups, like the Manyema, Yao, and Makonde who were among the town's first settlers, possessed a large number of homes.

However, it is noteworthy that neither Shomvi nor Zaramo had much real estate because Dar es Salaam's explosive growth from humble beginnings had engulfed both native groups.

Shomvi were primarily fishermen, while Zaramo, who came from a less developed educational region, were "very submerged"—a characteristic that set Dar es Salaam apart from the other capitals of East Africa.

[17] The objective of the Zaaramo Union according to its secretary, was to construct the "UNITY, BESTIR LIFT UP", of the Wazaramo and their country in the essential matters.

Some of these matrilineal peoples, like the Zaramo, Luguru, Mwera, and Makonde, were able to survive in the south-east where tsetse may have prevented men from acquiring cattle to pass on to their sons.

[20] Zanzibar Arabs, state William Worger, Nancy Clark and Edward Alpers, however pursued their slave raiding into the mainland, where they would seize pagan Zaramo adults and children, gag them so they would not cry out, and then sell them to the traders.

[20][21] The Zaramo society's history has long been influenced by the coastal encounter between the Arab-Persian and African populations typical of East Africa, since the 8th century.

[22] During the colonial era, the influence came from the encounter between the African people, Arab-Swahili trader intermediaries and the European powers, but it broadly coopted the older slave-driven, social stratification model.

[23] According to Elke Stockreiter – a professor of History specializing on Africa, the slaves seized from Zaramo people and other ethnic groups such as Yao, Makonde and Nyamwezi peoples from the mainland and brought to the coastal Tanzania region and Zanzibar sought social inclusion and attempted to reduce their treatment as inferiors by their slave owners by adopting and adapting to Islam in the 19th century.

Each novice, mwali, have a designated instructor, mhunga, who guides the youth through the circumcision process, teaches Zaramo sex lore and practice.

Mwana hiti may be represented in other forms besides figures such as walking sticks, staff, stool, musical instruments, and grave posts among others.

Mwana hiti are cylindrical figures with depictions of a head and torso of relatively equal size and usually no arms, legs or genitalia.

They also act as the main socializing for the mwali during her seclusion, measuring her skills as a future mother and teaching her the responsibilities of womanhood (i.e. taking care of oneself and children.

The carver creates mwana hiti out of one piece of wood (or gourd) that he picks out, though any decorations for hair or jewelry must be provided by the family.

[29] The Zaramo people have borrowed from the general Swahili and the once-occupying Arab culture in terms of dress such as wearing a skull cap, Islamic festivals and Muslim observances, but they continue some of their pre-Islam traditions such as matrilineal kinship, while a few pursue the Kolelo fertility cult and the worship of their ancient deity Mulungu.

[33] The traditional practice of Mganga or medicine man, along with Muslim clerics offering services as divine healers, remains popular among the impoverished Zaramo communities.

They produce staple foods such as rice, millet, maize, sorghum, and cassava, as well as cash crops such as coconuts, legumes, cashews, pineapples, oranges, and bananas.

After Tanzanian independence in the 1960s, an increasing number of Zaramo people have requested to be buried in their home villages on private land or on church grounds.

[29] The influence of Islam and the increase of urbanization and literacy have been marked as responsible for the decline in traditional Zaramo figure grave posts.

Sometimes grave markers are created as marionette-like, wooden puppets called motto wa bandia to become mnemonic honorary devices.

[7] Mtungi are large pots, sometimes reaching 2 feet high, that are made particularly to hold water for bathing and drinking; a household generally has two of these vessels, one for each use.

The plant fibers are then put into plaits, of which there are many different types such as jicho la kuku for "eye of the chicken," pacha for "crossroads," and vinyota as "stars."

Dying of baskets, if done, is usually in black or red-orange made from roots of the mdaa plant or berries of the mzingefuri respectively.