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DISCOURSE ON MORAL WOMANHOOD IN SOMALI POPULAR SONGS, 1960–1990

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 April 2009

LIDWIEN KAPTEIJNS
LIDWIEN KAPTEIJNS
Affiliation:
Wellesley College, MA
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Abstract

This article is a study of Somali popular songs of the period 1960–90, which opened with the establishment of the Somali national state and ended with its collapse. It focuses on these songs as a discursive site in which a particular dilemma of the new Somali state clearly comes into focus, namely the desire to be ‘modern’, while at the same time turning to ‘tradition’ (i.e. a particular construction of Somali cultural authenticity and traditional religious morality) to mark and anchor a new Somali collective self-understanding and communal identity. The discursive push-and-pull of ‘modernity’ and ‘tradition’ evident in the songs expresses itself specifically in debates about moral womanhood – that is to say, about what ‘good’ women should be like. Since the collapse of the state in 1991, Somali discourses about common public identity and gender norms have undergone dramatic change, with the sites of popular culture multiplying, especially outside of Somalia, and accessible through the internet. Although an interpretation of Islam that distances itself from Somali ‘tradition’ has been gaining importance as a source of legitimization, as is evident both in the struggle over the state in Somalia and in everyday life in Somalia and the diaspora, this is not a major concern in the Somali popular songs from the period after 1991.

        It was born auspiciously this flag raised above us
        We will not differentiate among any Somalis
        Since none of us are closer to it than the others,
        Let us be equal in front of our flag
        (Waa samo ku dhalayoo calanka noo saaran
        Soomaali oo dhan, kala sooci mayno
        Uma kala sokeynno, ha loo sinnaado)
    Somali popular song, articulating the hope of Somali unity and equality, sung by Faduumo Abdillaahi ‘Maandeeq’ in the early 1960s

Keywords

Somaliagenderoral culturewomen
Type
Political and Moral Discourses in Postcolonial Africa
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 50 , Issue 1 , March 2009 , pp. 101 - 122
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

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References

1 Margot Badran, Feminists, Islam and Nation: Gender and the Making of Modern Egypt (Princeton, 1994); Marnia Lazreg, The Eloquence of Silence: Algerian Women in Question (New York, 1994); and Deniz Kandiyoti (ed.), Women, Islam and the State (Philadelphia, 1991).

2 Kapteijns, Lidwien, ‘Disintegration of Somalia: a historiographical essay’, Bildhaan: An International Journal of Somali Studies, 3 (2003), 11–52.Google Scholar

3 The source base for this article is described in Lidwien Kapteijns (with Maryan Omar Ali), Women's Voices in a Man's World: Women and the Pastoral Tradition in Northern Somali Orature, c. 1899–1980 (Portsmouth NH, 1999), 209–15. I expanded on it during research in Ethiopia and Djibouti (June–Dec. 2007), funded by a Fulbright-Hays fellowship.

4 See Saadia Touval, Somali Nationalism: International Politics and the Drive for Unity in the Horn of Africa (Cambridge MA, 1963), and Paolo Tripodi, The Colonial Legacy in Somalia: From Colonial Administration to Operation Restore Hope (New York, 1999).

5 Abdirazak Haji Hussen, ‘The Somali crisis: how did it happen and where do we go from here?’ (public lecture presented at the Somali Institute for Research and Development (SIRAD) Public Forum Series 2004, Boston, 2 May 2004).

6 The nationalists combated, but with less emphasis, the discrimination against the so-called ‘Bantu Somalis’ and the so-called ‘lower caste’ Somalis called ‘Midgaan’, ‘Yibir’ and ‘Tumaal’. For the racial discrimination against the so-called ‘Bantu Somalis’, see Kenneth Menkhaus, ‘Rural transformation and the roots of underdevelopment in Somalia's Lower Jubba Valley’ (unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of South Carolina, 1989), as well as several chapters in A. J. Ahmed (ed.), The Invention of Somalia (Lawrenceville, 1995). For the so-called ‘low-caste Somalis’, see, for example, www.midgaan.com and the fictionalized account of Mahmood Gaildoon, The Yibir of Las Burgabo (Lawrenceville, 2005).

7 Abdi Samatar, The State and Rural Transformation in Northern Somalia, 1885–1985 (Madison, 1989).

8 See Lidwien Kapteijns and Mursal Farah, review of I. M. Lewis, A Pastoral Democracy: A Study of Pastoralism and Politics among the Northern Somali of the Horn of Africa (3rd ed.,1999), Africa, 4 (2001), 719–23, and Kapteijns, Women's Voices, 151–7, for a brief analysis of the colonial transformation of Somali kinship. See also Lidwien Kapteijns, ‘Women and the crisis of communal identity: the cultural construction of gender in Somali history’, in Ahmed I. Samatar (ed.), The Somali Challenge: From Catastrophe to Renewal? (Boulder, 1994), 211–31, and Samatar, Abdi, ‘Destruction of state and society in Somalia: beyond the tribal convention’, Journal of Modern African Studies, 30 (1992), 625–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 Donald Donham argues that ‘[t]o invoke the modern involves a particular rhetorical stance and a way of experiencing time and historicity, with a certain structure of progressive expectation for the future’. ‘On being modern in a capitalist world: some conceptual issues’, in Bruce M. Knauft (ed.), Critically Modern: Alternatives, Alterities, Anthropologies (Bloomington, 2002), 241–57, 244. Constructing views of the ‘traditional’ is, therefore, in his view, intrinsic to modern projects. For a recent discussion of modernity and nationalism in colonial Sudan, see Heather J. Sharkey, Living with Colonialism: Nationalism and Culture in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan (Berkeley, 2003).

10 For education during the colonial period, see Samatar, The State, 59–81. Lewis, A Modern History, 97–8, 103, 133, 148–9.

11 Samatar, The State; Lewis, A Modern History, pp. 142–3.

12 For the failures of leadership, see David D. Laitin and Said S. Samatar, Somalia: Nation in Search of a State (Boulder, 1987), and Ahmed I. Samatar, Socialist Somalia: Rhetoric and Reality (London, 1988). For dependence on foreign aid, see Samatar, Ahmed I. and Samatar, Abdi I., ‘The material roots of the suspended Somali state’, Journal of Modern African Studies, 25 (1987), 669–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Ozay Mehmet, ‘Effectiveness of foreign aid: the case of Somalia’, Journal of Modern African Studies, 9 (1971), 31–47.

13 More research is needed on the group of artists whose creative genius gave shape to this dimension of the Somali nationalist narrative. Kapteijns (Women's Voices, 104–6) may overstate the level of formal education of this group and understate the impact of state institutions (such as the radio stations of Hargeisa and Mogadishu) in promoting and commissioning socially relevant songwriting. However, artists were certainly urban people who had strong ties to, or roots in, the rural areas and thus served as cultural brokers between the city and the countryside (miyi iyo magaalo).

14 Somalia did not have an official Somali orthography until 1972. Even though the massive literacy campaigns that followed this dramatically raised basic literacy levels in city and countryside, Somalia remained in many ways an oral society.

15 For the history of the Somali popular song, see John J. Johnson, Heellooy, Heelleellooy: The Development of the Genre Heello in Modern Somali Poetry (Bloomington, 1974), and Kapteijns, Women's Voices, Part Two. The label ‘popular song’ or ‘pop song’ is mine, but it is based on the Somali term for the hees, or ‘modern song’, which consists of love songs (analyzed in Kapteijns, Women's Voices) and explicitly political songs (analyzed in Johnson, Heellooy). The discourse of soomaalinimo and Somali unity informs both genres, but is most explicit in the political songs, so much so that there is a whole sub-genre called waddani or ‘patriotic’ songs. For the term hees and its thematic subdivision, see Maxamed Daahir Afrax, Fan-Masraxeedka Soomaalida: Raad-raac Taariikheed iyo Faaqidaad Riwaayado Caan-baxay (Djibouti, 1987 [published by the author]).

16 Interviews with Faduumo Qasim Hilowle and Ahmed Ismail Hussein Hudeidi, by Ahmed I. Samatar and Lidwien Kapteijns, St. Paul, 18 and 20 July 2004. The state purposely promoted a national popular culture through the radio stations of Mogadishu and Hargeisa, as well as the National Theatre, and put large numbers of artists on the payrolls of these institutions.

17 For Somali drama, see Hassan Sheikh Mumin, Leopard Among the Women (Shabeelnaagood), trans. with intro. by B. W. Andrzejewski (London, 1974); Afrax, Fan-Masraxeedka Soomaalida; and Afrax, Maxamed Daahir, ‘Theatre as a window on society: opposing influences of tradition and modernity in Somali plays’, Halabuur: Journal for Somali Literature and Culture, 1 & 2 (2007), 74–82.Google Scholar

18 Kelly M. Askew, Performing the Nation: Swahili Music and Cultural Politics in Tanzania (Chicago, 2002), 273, uses the term ‘national imaginaries’ for ‘the multiple and often contradictory layers and fragments of ideology that underlie continually shifting conceptions of any given nation’. Here ‘the nationalist imaginary’ stands for the sociocultural dimension of the nation-building project and its impact on notions of Somali public identity.

19 Said S. Samatar, Oral Poetry and Somali Nationalism: The Case of Sayyid Mahammad 'Abdille Hasan (Cambridge, 1982), 56–7. Samatar says this about what nomadic society regarded as its most prestigious genres of oral poetry – precisely the genres that had the greatest influence on the popular song.

20 Ibid. 58.

21 This was the case in spite of the reification of nomadic tradition that is evident in the popular culture of this period. I have analyzed this in Kapteijns, Women's Voices, 151–7. See also Ali Jimale Ahmed (ed.), The Invention of Somalia (Lawrenceville, 1995), which diagnoses the problem well but does not do justice to its historical genesis.

22 This is the burden of the second part of Kapteijns' Women's Voices.

23 Jama, Zeinab Mohamed, ‘Fighting to be heard: Somali women's poetry’, African Languages and Cultures, 4 (1991), 43–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Maryan Muuse Boqor, ‘Somali women's roles in the movement for independence’ (oral presentation at the celebration of Somali National Week, Somali Women's and Children's Association, Boston, 29 June 2001). It is precisely because of our limited historical knowledge of Somali women's lives, including their role in the nationalist movement, that I have turned to the songs as a source, if not for women's lives, then at least for discourses about women.

24 Touval, Somali Nationalism, 87.

25 Maryan Muuse Boqor, ‘Somali women's roles’. Compare Badran, Feminists, Islam and Nation; Naomi Chazan, ‘Gender perspectives on African states’, in Jane L. Parpart and Kathleeen A. Staudt (eds.), Women and the State in Africa (Boulder, 1989), 185–201; and Geisler, Gisela, ‘Troubled sisterhood: women and politics in southern Africa: case studies from Zambia, Zimbabwe and Botswana’, African Affairs, 94 (Oct. 1995), 545–78CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

26 In ‘Modern subjects: Egyptian melodrama and postcolonial difference’, in Timothy Mitchell (ed.), Questions of Modernity (Minneapolis, 2000), 87–114, Lila Abu-Lughod gives as characteristics of modern personhood ‘a rich inner life and an intense individuality’ (p. 94), as well as being ‘autonomous, bounded, self-activating, [and] verbalizing him/herself’ (p. 95). Lutz and Abu-Lughod argue as well that such ‘modern subjects’ are also characterized by particular constructions of emotionality, quoting Foucault as arguing that ‘emotion discourse might represent a privileged site of production of the modern self’ (p. 6). See Catherine A. Lutz and Lila Abu-Lughod, ‘Introduction: emotion, discourse, and the politics of everyday life’, in Lutz and Abu-Lughod (eds.), Language and the Politics of Emotion (Cambridge, 1990), 1–23.

27 Kapteijns, Women's Voices, 111–49.

28 Maryan Muuse, interviewed in Boston, Ramadan (Jan.–Feb.) 2001.

29 Kapteijns, Women's Voices, 121–40.

30 See also ibid. 141–2, 203.

31 Faduumo and Haydar, a couple of legendary fame, believed to have lived in sixteenth-century Zeila and to have died of love. See ibid. 162.

32 Hassan Sheikh Mumin, Leopard Among the Women.

33 My translation, but with reference to ibid. 174–7.

34 My translation, but with reference to ibid. 92–5. See also Kapteijns, Women's Voices, 144–5.

35 Kapteijns, Women's Voices, 201–2.

36 See, for example, Lata Mani, ‘Contentious traditions: the debate on “sati” in colonial India’, in Kumkum Sangari and Sudesh Vaid (eds.), Recasting Women: Essays in Colonial History (New Dehli, 1989), 88–126; Peter Knauss, The Persistence of Patriarchy: Class, Gender and Ideology in Twentieth-Century Algeria (New York, 1987).

37 Kapteijns, Women's Voices, 199–200.

38 Ibid. 200–1.

39 Ibid. 156–7.

40 We do not have a comprehensive history of women during the Barre regime, but see Abdurahman Abdullahi, Women, Islamists and the Military Regime in Somalia: The Reform of the Family Law and its Repercussions (McGill University: working paper, 2007); Somali Women's Democratic Organization (SWDO), Women in the SDR [Somali Democratic Republic]: An Appraisal of the Progress in the Implementation of the World Plan of Action of the United Nations Decade for Women, 1971–85 (Mogadishu, 1985); Samatar, Socialist Somalia, esp. 103–7 and 113; and Laitin and Samatar, Somalia, esp. 86–7, 95.

41 Oral Information, Somali community of Boston, 2001.

42 See, for example, Swanee Hunt and Cristina Posa, ‘Women waging peace’, in Foreign Policy, 124 (May–June 2001), 38–47; and Haleh Esfandiari, Reconstructed Lives: Women and Iran's Islamic Revolution (Washington, 1997).

43 Judith Gardner and Judy El-Bushra (eds.), Somalia – The Untold Story: The War Through the Eyes of Somali Women (London, 2004).

44 It has been evident at all major national reconciliation meetings that Somali women also allow themselves to be used as instruments for the sectarian pursuits of their menfolk. See also Matt Bryden and Martina I. Steiner, Somalia between Peace and War: Somali Women on the Eve of the 21st Century (African Women for Peace Series) (Nairobi, 1998). The volume edited by Gardner and El-Bushra (Somalia – The Untold Story) suggests that the women's movement in the (as yet not internationally recognized) Republic of Somaliland appears to be one of the most developed.

45 See, for example, Tripodi, The Colonial Legacy in Somalia. For a critique of such a-historical revisionism, see Kapteijns, Lidwien, ‘Review essay: state and clan in Somalia’, African Studies Review, 3 (2002), 52–8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

46 See for a discussion of the post-war historiography on Somalia, Kapteijns, ‘Disintegration’.

47 For different kinds of Islamisms (including jihadism), see Alex de Waal (ed.), Islamism and its Enemies in the Horn of Africa (Bloomington, 2004). For Somalia, see Abdurahman Abdullahi, ‘Recovering Somalia: the Islamic factor’ (paper presented to the Ninth International Congress of Somali Studies, Aalborg University, 6–7 September 2004).

48 For women, the new emphasis on Islam as a marker of moral womanhood was born from the experience of violence, flight and resettlement in a new and alien context (Boston, participant observation, 2001). See Awa Abdi, ‘Refugee camps in Kenya: where is the light?’ Journal of the Anglo-Somali Society (Spring 2004). Abdi, Awa M., ‘In limbo: dependency, insecurity, and identity amongst Somali refugees in Dadaab camps’, Bildhaan: An International Journal of Somali Studies, 5 (2005), 17–34.Google Scholar

49 Compare Salma Ahmed Nageeb, New Spaces and Old Frontiers: Women, Social Space, and Islamization in Sudan (Lanham, 2004).

50 See, for example, Hamdi Mohamed, ‘Multiple challenges, multiple struggles: a history of women's activism in Canada’ (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Ottawa, 2003).

51 The following is provisional, as it is the subject matter of my current research.

52 For K'naan, see www.dustyfoot.com.

53 However, in Djibouti, Somali poets and singers have modernized the older genres of praise songs for the Prophet and the women of his family to great success. The most important groups are those of Omar Aadan (which has a special women's section called Kooxda Sitti) and Sheikh Dandaawi. See Lidwien Kapteijns, ‘Ramadan in Djibouti: Daily Life and Popular Religion’, ISIM Review (International Institute for the Study of Islam in the Modern World, Leiden), 21 (Spring 2008), 46–7.

54 Issa-Salwe, Abdisalam M., ‘The internet and the Somali diaspora: the Web as a new means of expression’, Bildhaan: An International Journal of Somali Studies, 6 (2006), 54–67.Google Scholar According to Salwe there were over 400 Somali websites as of mid-2004, and c. 700 in spring 2008. There are some sites specifically dealing with Islamic perspectives on Somali matters (e.g. www.daralhijrah.com and www.islaax.org) while other sites have sections devoted to religion.

55 See, for example, the left columns of the home pages of Somali websites such as www.hiiraanonline.com or www.wardheernews.com. The local music store in each middle-sized town is also a significant center of distribution.