Reportage

In November of 2010, my father and I travelled into the bush of Tanzania to live with three remote tribes: the Maasai, the Barbaig and the Iraq. This was a journey of not only self discovery, but one of education and learning, as we went to locate the roots of tribal music in ancient cultures. The aim was to travel to cultures largely untouched by western civilization and communicate with them primarily through song, not words. This has never been done before and hopefully will lead on to more of these studies in the future.

The African people have always been in my mind as a proud and beautiful race that have endured not only the harsh conditions of their surroundings, but the ever changing influence of the world around them. I wanted to document the journey to show the indigenous tribal people as I saw them: a wonderfully rich and wise people, full of pride and determination to preserve their way of life.

They truly are a most beautiful people, who welcomed us with open arms into their society and allowed us to be part of their day to day lives.

These images show a small selection of the amazing people I met in my journey and are part of a large collection of images that show the tribes of Tanzania as I saw them.

Tanzania is undergoing big shifts in their political, education and social infrastructure and these changes are affecting the remaining indigenous tribes of the country.

Before the traditional ways of these tribes are lost, we wanted to visit them to learn from their traditions and how they live their lives. One of the goals of the project was to create a set of photographs that could be used to show how these remote tribes live, and to raise awareness of the work that the Livingstone Tanzania Trust does to help these people adapt to the new world.

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More details of this and other projects by James Stone can be found at www.jamesoliverstone.co.uk