316: The Journey, by Maryam Mursal

Maryam Mursal (Somalia)
The Journey (1998)
8 tracks, 53 minutes
Bandcamp ∙ Spotify ∙ iTunes

For a long time, Maryam Mursal’s The Journey was the only album of Somali music to make any real impression on the so-called ‘world music’ scene. Released on Real World Records, produced by Simon Emmerson and Martin Russell of Afro Celt Sound System, and featuring guest stars such as Peter Gabriel, it’s obvious that this album was an attempt at exploding Mursal as the next big thing in world music, similar to the ways that releases by Baaba Maal and Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, with their similar collaborative productions, had worked in the past.

Unfortunately, it didn’t really turn out that way. This was the only album that Mursal made for Real World – although she had also contributed to the album of more traditionally Somali music by Waaberi, New Dawn, the previous year – and in fact, I can’t find that she’s recorded any albums since. Looking back now, the album hasn’t aged well. Whereas other similar productions built upon the traditional styles, taking them in different directions and creating something new from the cultural collisions at play, all of the funky, dubby, world-spanning sounds on The Journey take away from the original styles more than they add to them and in a way that sounds particularly dated from two decades in the future.

The album is redeemed, however, through the sheer power of Mursal’s performance. Even despite the clunkiest and most distracting of the production elements, her low-pitched and throaty voice shines through, drawing the attention with her cool delivery. The vocals feel ever so slightly detached from the rest of the instrumentation as if lagging behind minutely in a relaxed, easy-going way, which lends a really nice and laid-back swing to it all. And then, at times, Mursal’s vocals and the production do come together as one and create a really great track, such as ‘Somali Udiida Ceb’.

I wanted to include this as a Good Album more because of what it meant than how it actually turned out. This album was a well-respected world music record label giving a seal of confidence in Somali music as a modern musical form and with international appeal for the first time. The way they went about it wasn’t ideal, but it wasn’t until K’naan’s 2005 album Dusty Foot Philosopher that Somali music gained any further international presence. In the last few years, with the re-discovery of the Dur-Dur Band back catalogue and the crate-digging of Ostinato Records (which resulted in Sweet As Broken Dates: Lost Somali Tapes from the Horn of Africa) and Analog Africa (Mogadisco – Dancing Mogadishu (Somalia 1972-1991), which comes out in December), Somali music has really taken off as a world music genre, as people realise how exciting these melodies and rhythms can be.

Before this album came out, Maryam Mursal was already respected as a singer among Somali people around the world; The Journey solidified her as a star, the first Somali singer to cross over to audiences outside East Africa. Nowadays she sings in public less often (she runs a fabric shop in Southall), but whenever she does she’s hailed as a real grandmother of modern Somali music. This album represents a milestone – its cultural significance outstripping its success as a musical artefact. And sometimes that’s just as important in determining what is or isn’t a Good Album.

051: Sweet As Broken Dates: Lost Somali Tapes from the Horn of Africa, by Various Artists

Various Artists (Somalia)
Sweet As Broken Dates: Lost Somali Tapes from the Horn of Africa (2017)
16 tracks, 86 minutes (LP version)
Bandcamp · Spotify · iTunes

Here’s an album that I reviewed not too long ago for Songlines magazine (you can read that on my other blog); it only came out a couple of years ago, after all. I will try my best to find different things to say!

When I first heard about the existence of this album, I admit that I was a little put out. I’d been interested Somali music since I did my undergraduate in music, starting back in 2011. I loved the music for starters, how the use of pentatonic scales and florid vocal ornaments give it a unique flavour and sonically position it precisely in its geographical home in the Horn of Africa, right next to the Arabic peninsula. But there was an intrigue to it too: how could such a range of music have been almost completely ignored within the international music scene? So I held my little idea of maybe delving into the Somali music scene and bringing it to wider attention in Europe. But then this album came along.

Of course, Ostinato Records did a much better job than I could have done, to the point that this album was nominated for a Grammy. Now there’s Somali music being brought to wider attention. The story behind the album is undoubtedly compelling: the tracks having been sourced mostly from the Red Sea Foundation, who had collected (and sometimes even literally dug up) 10,000 tapes that had been hidden by Radio Hargeisa and others to save them from the Somali civil war. But what attracts me most is, as usual, the music.

This compilation brings together pop music by Somalis from across the Horn of Africa from the 60s to the 2000s. As seems to be the case quite often with this sort of compilation, the music skews to the funky – I guess the ‘rare groove’ label probably covers it the best. So there’s funk, there’s reggae, there’s disco, Bollywood music, rock’n’roll and soul in there too in varying amounts depending on the artist, but no matter what other outside influences are laid upon the tracks, the music always retains that strong Somali identity, those same ornaments, the same scales and the same distinctively Somali way of rhyming their poetry. There’s also liberal amounts of sorta-dodgy retro synths and Hammond organs; truly, this album is playing to my weaknesses.

I didn’t get to make that album of Somali music that opened international ears to these wonderful sounds, but I’m glad Ostinato Records did, and did it well. At least I can still set my sights on making that album of Chadian music that I've had on my mind at some point…oh wait a minute, they’re already working on it. Well.

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.