Zenji flava is a common nickname for

Zanzibar Zanzibar (; ; ) is an insular semi-autonomous province which united with Tanganyika in 1964 to form the United Republic of Tanzania. It is an archipelago in the Indian Ocean, off the coast of the mainland, and consists of many small islands ...

i hip hop, a genre that began to develop in the 1990s. The name is made of ''zenji'', which is slang for "Zanzibar", and ''flava'', which is a corruption of "flavour", thus meaning "of Zanzibari taste". As with

bongo flava Bongo Flava (or Bongoflava) is a nickname for Tanzanian music. The genre developed in the 1990s, mainly as a derivative of American hip hop and traditional Tanzanian styles such as taarab and dansi, with additional influences from reggae, R ...

, i.e., Tanzanian mainland's hip hop, zenji flava is usually sung in swahili; the main difference between the two subgenres is that Zanzibari hip hop also reflects some influence of

taarab Taarab is a music genre popular in Tanzania and Kenya. It is influenced by the musical traditions of the African Great Lakes, North Africa, the Middle East, and the Indian subcontinent. Taarab rose to prominence in 1928 with the advent of the ...

, and thus indirectly of

Arab music Arabic music or Arab music ( ar, الموسيقى العربية, al-mūsīqā al-ʿArabīyyah) is the music of the Arab world with all its diverse music styles and genres. Arabic countries have many rich and varied styles of music and also man ...

and

Indian music Owing to India's vastness and diversity, Indian music encompasses numerous genres in multiple varieties and forms which include classical music, folk (Bollywood), rock, and pop. It has a history spanning several millennia and developed ove ...

. Notable zenji flava artists include Ali Haji.History of Zenji Flava
As Zenji flavour goes on it find itself as a sub part of Bongo flava as it has influence from the young generation of artists who want to cop with Bongo flava. like Offside trick, 2 berry now is separated to form two solo artists（Berry black and Berry white）, Wazenji kijiwe and Shaka zulu, others are East connection which was made up with almost seven groups of artist including Offside trick Brooklyn, Four nature, Jumbo camp, Queen love, and K jam. It was in this time that Zenji flava was modernized with rapid growth in the number of artists.

Notes

Culture of Zanzibar Tanzanian hip hop Hip hop genres {{tanzania-stub