If you live in Europe or America and you're into Tanzanian music, there's a good chance you're familiar with bi Kidude. The female singer from the island of Zanzibar is said to be over a hundred years old, though nobody knows her exact age. Known for her taarab singing as well as unyago (initiation) performances, she recorded an album, was the subject of the documentary 'As old as my tongue', and performed abroad with a band of musicians who were young enough to be her grandchildren. In Zanzibar Kidude is a bit of a local celebrity, but it took her fame abroad for people in Tanzania to really recognize her skill. She did feature on some Tanzanian hip hop and bongo flava tracks by Fid Q and Offside Trick, though in her own work the centenarian sticks with the more traditional genres.

That's different for Bi Cheka, a new elderly star from mainland Tanzania. Not quite as old as Kidude, she's still three times the age of the average bongo flava artist. Bi Cheka ('cheka' is Swahili for 'smile' and 'bi' is a female preposition) got discovered recently, not from a taarab performance but by rapping live on air during Clouds FM's XXL show last January. 

An elderly woman rapping and talking about her intentions to break through in bongo flava, a genre dominated by singers and rappers in their late teens and early twenties, didn't go unnoticed in Tanzania. Bi Cheka's next step was to record a song and accompanying music video which was launched this week. And her lyrics talk about… love between an older lady and a young guy! The latter is enacted by bongo flava artist Mheshimiwa Temba who also drops a verse on the track. Bi Cheka didn't rap this time, in this song she sings with a little help from autotune.
 
Info source: ThisIsAfrica.me