011: Jamiila: Songs from a Somali City, by Various Artists

Various Artists (Somalia)
Jamiila: Songs From A Somali City (1987)
8 tracks, 40 minutes
Listen on YouTube

I’m a big fan of Somali music, and I’m really glad it’s getting some recognition in the West in the last couple of years with various reissues of the funk and soul music of the 1980s. But those recordings, great as they are (some of them will feature here at some point over the year) all fit the very fashionable and palatable template of ‘African rare groove.’ There isn’t too much heard over here of the more traditional music and poetry, or the pop music from the last couple of decades, which is a shame.

This album is a compilation of recordings made by John Low in the southern Somali port city of Barawa. It also presents pop music from the mid-80s, but it has much more in common with traditional music than the funk of Dur-Dur Band and the like. There are only a handful of musicians featured on this album in various different combinations, but there are quite a few styles. Some are very traditional-esque, played on oud or acoustic guitar by a musician accompanying his own sung poetry, and occasionally joined by a taruumbo flute player. On other tracks, the acoustic guitar is joined by an electric organ, which also provides programmed bass and drum patterns and providing a very different atmosphere to the songs.

It’s a really cool set of recordings as they captures a time when the popular music of Somalia was changing, from the unaccompanied serious poetry of the past to the synth-led love songs that are the dominant form today. You can even hear it in a state of flux on the album itself – when the musicians are playing oud and flute, the traditional tunings and rhythms are used, but when they bring in guitar or organ, the tunings become the Western equal temperament and the rhythms even have a hint of reggae to them.

There’s also an extra bit of interest in this album for me, if I’m wearing my academic’s hat. These recordings, as well as the rest of Low’s recordings in the Sablaale district of Somalia, also play a major part in Emma Brinkhurst’s PhD thesis, including a particularly lovely story regarding Amin Xaaji Cusmann, a singer, oud- and guitar-player featured heavily on this album. The thesis – entitled Music, Memory and Belonging: Oral Tradition and Archival Engagement Among the Somali Community of London’s King’s Cross – is a wonderful piece of writing and research, and it gave me lots of inspiration for my own master’s dissertation. If you fancy a bit of entertaining but academic reading, I can’t recommend it enough.

If your interest is sufficiently piqued, you can listen to the entirety of Low’s Somali recordings (as well as his recordings from Sudan, Kenya, Tanzania, Congo and Zambia) at the British Library Sounds website, here.