Mdee Music
Vanessa Mdee's Dar es Salaam label, founded with her sister Mimi Mars and now largely dormant.
- Based in
- Dar es Salaam, Tanzania
Mdee Music is the record label of Tanzanian artist Vanessa Mdee, based in Dar es Salaam. In an OkayAfrica interview, Mdee said she and her family built the label in memory of their father and to grow Tanzanian talent; her sister, singer Mimi Mars, is both an artist on the label and a shareholder.
Phonogram credits place the label’s releases from 2013 through gaps around her 2018 signing to Universal Music Group’s AfroForce1 imprint and beyond. A second artist, Brian Simba, was part of the roster until his departure in 2021, after which reporting describes the label as largely dormant, with Mimi Mars its sole remaining signed act. There is no public filing establishing Mdee Music as an incorporated entity separate from Vanessa Mdee herself.
The label is notable in the Tanzanian industry as one of the few female-founded, female-run imprints in a market still dominated by male executives, predating Nandy’s The African Princess label by several years.