Festival · February
Sauti za Busara
Four nights of African music inside a 17th-century fort.
Ngome Kongwe (Old Fort), Stone Town, ZanzibarPeak: Festival weekend — four consecutive nights in mid-February
The event
East Africa's warmest music festival: taarab, bongo flava, reggae and Afrobeat across four nights in the Old Fort, with Stone Town spilling out around it.
Sauti za Busara — 'sounds of wisdom' in Kiswahili — is the festival that made Stone Town a February destination. It runs inside the coral-stone walls of the Old Fort, which is small enough that you are never far from the stage, and the bill leans hard toward artists who actually live and work on the continent: Zanzibari taarab orchestras, Tanzanian bongo flava, roots reggae, Congolese rumba, Ethio-jazz.
Around the ticketed nights the whole town participates — the opening carnival parade down Creek Road, beach performances, and late sets in the alleys near Forodhani. It is the single best week of the year to be in Stone Town, and also the busiest.
We pair the festival with the part of Zanzibar that has nothing to do with music: spice farms, Jozani's red colobus, dhow sailing, and a stretch of quiet east-coast beach afterwards to recover on.
What you actually get
- Four nights of live music inside the Old Fort
- Opening carnival parade through Stone Town
- Taarab, bongo flava, reggae and Afrobeat on one bill
- Stone Town heritage walk, spice farm and Jozani forest by day
- Quiet east-coast beach days to finish
Timed to this event
Journeys built around it
These itineraries run in or overlap the February window. Dates flex to your flights — tell us your arrival and we route backwards from it.
Elsewhere on the calendar
See all events →June to October
The Great Migration
Between June and October roughly two million wildebeest, zebra and gazelle push north through the Serengeti and pile up at the Mara River. We camp where the herds actually are and move as they move.
- Season
- June to October
- Where
- Serengeti
- Journeys
- 4 built around it
January to March
Calving Season on the Ndutu Plains
On the short-grass plains around Ndutu the wildebeest drop nearly half a million calves inside a few weeks. It is the most concentrated wildlife spectacle in Africa and the best big-cat action of the year.
- Season
- January to March
- Where
- Southern Serengeti & Ndutu, Ngorongoro Conservation Area
- Journeys
- 4 built around it
Hold your place for Sauti za Busara
February fills earliest. Tell us your window and we will confirm what is still open.