Cannabis Music in Sub-Saharan Africa During the 1910s

What the 1910s actually looked like

By the 1910s, cannabis had been cultivated and smoked across large parts of sub-Saharan Africa for centuries. Portuguese, German, and British colonial observers documented its use in the Congo basin, Angola, Mozambique, present-day Tanzania, Malawi, Zambia, Zimbabwe, and South Africa from at least the 16th century onward Strong evidence^[1][2]. Cannabis arrived in Africa from South or Southeast Asia, likely via Indian Ocean trade and the East African coast, and spread inland along trade and migration routes Strong evidence^[1].

The 1910s specifically sat at the tail end of an aggressive colonial push to suppress cannabis. The Natal colony banned dagga as early as 1870, the Union of South Africa formally prohibited it in 1922, and similar restrictions appeared across British, Portuguese, Belgian, and German territories in the preceding two decades Strong evidence^[3]. Music about cannabis during this decade therefore existed under increasing legal and missionary pressure — often unrecorded and undocumented by colonial authorities except as evidence of vice.

The Bashilenge and the 'riamba cult'

The most-cited primary source for cannabis-and-music in this era is actually slightly earlier: German ethnographer Hermann Wissmann and his colleagues documented the Bena Riamba ('Sons of Hemp') among the Bashilenge of the southern Congo in the 1880s Strong evidence^[1][4]. Wissmann described communal pipe-smoking gatherings (katente) accompanied by singing, drumming, and ritual greetings invoking riamba.

This Bashilenge material was still circulating in colonial ethnography through the 1910s and shaped how Europeans framed African cannabis music generally. But it is important to be clear: most of what is written today about 'African cannabis songs in the 1910s' is extrapolation backward from later 20th-century ethnomusicology, or forward from Wissmann's 1880s notes. Decade-specific 1910s documentation is sparse Weak / limited.

Mine labor, migration, and work songs

One context where cannabis and music genuinely intersected during the 1910s is southern African migrant labor. Workers from Mozambique, Lesotho, Malawi (then Nyasaland), and rural South Africa moved through the Witwatersrand gold mines and Kimberley diamond fields, bringing dagga-smoking customs with them Strong evidence^[3][5]. Mining compounds developed their own song cultures — precursors to genres later recorded as marabi and mbube — and oral histories collected decades later mention dagga as part of off-shift social life Weak / limited^[5].

Direct 1910s lyrical evidence is rare because commercial recording of Black African music had barely started. Gallo Records, the first major South African label, was not founded until 1926. So 'cannabis mine songs' from the 1910s exist mainly in later memory and reconstruction, not in primary audio.

East Africa: bangi and coastal traditions

Along the Swahili coast and inland through present-day Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda, cannabis was known as bangi (from Hindi/Urdu bhang), reflecting Indian Ocean trade contacts Strong evidence^[1]. Coastal taarab music was developing in Zanzibar in this period under Egyptian and Arab influence, but explicit cannabis references in surviving early taarab lyrics are not well documented for the 1910s No data.

Further inland, missionary and colonial medical reports from German East Africa during this decade complained about bangi use but rarely transcribed songs. The British Colonial Office report on East African hemp-smoking habits, compiled in connection with later League of Nations discussions, drew partly on observations from this period Weak / limited^[6].

Myths to push back on

A few claims circulate online that deserve correction:

• 'There are recordings of 1910s African cannabis songs.' No commercially released recordings of sub-Saharan African cannabis songs from the 1910s are known to exist in any major archive. Most pre-1920 African field recordings are wax cylinders held in European museums, and cannabis-specific examples have not been catalogued No data.
• 'Cannabis was central to all African traditional music.' It was significant in specific cultures (Bashilenge, some Sotho and Zulu contexts, parts of the Congo basin) but was not a pan-African musical theme Disputed.
• 'African cannabis music directly created reggae.' Jamaican Rastafari and reggae traditions absorbed African religious and rhythmic influences via the slave trade, but the line from 1910s African dagga songs to 1960s reggae is cultural, not direct Weak / limited. See Cannabis and Rastafari for the actual lineage.

What survived into the recorded era

Once commercial and field recording expanded in the 1930s–1950s, ethnomusicologists like Hugh Tracey began capturing songs that referenced dagga, including Sotho and Shona work songs and Chopi orchestral pieces Strong evidence^[5]. Those recordings give us our best indirect window into what 1910s traditions might have sounded like — but they are reconstructions, not time machines. The honest answer to 'what did 1910s African cannabis music sound like?' is: we have fragments, colonial second-hand descriptions, and informed guesses. Anyone telling you more than that is filling in blanks.

Sources

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