#somali diaspora

[worstjourney]

DID YOU KNOW, Cardiff has had a Somali community since the 1880s, centred mainly around the docks?

Get this and many other supplemental facts in the annotations of my graphic adaptation of The Worst Journey in the World, out Nov. 24th!

[dreamieparadise]

Can- can I ask about the Somali pirates?

Hi hi, Lili! Yes, of course. Tbh I shouldn't have called them "pirates" they are known as such and treated like villains, but they're more like unofficial naval guard! The official naval guard was disbanded in the 90's due to the civil war that broke out [btw this civil war is why I'm diaspora! My maternal family fled to Djibouti or elsewhere. My dad came to Canada due to it.] Anyway! Other nations took advantage of this as they tended to do and started fishing illegally in the waters! Somali citizens rely on fishing to live [also farming and agriculture bc I also recall there was a drought and famine going on] so they turned to "piracy" to stop these thieves from stealing from them! Of course, these outsiders didn't like it and called it "piracy." they shouldn't be there in the first place!!!

BFJRKRKRKR I TALKED IM THE TAGS AND REACHED THE LIMIT I AM SO SORRY LMAOOOOO

Other than Puntland there is also Jubbaland ok lol I love talking about my people's history too much

[luvmesumus]

[countriesgame]

Please reblog for a bigger sample size!

If you have any fun fact about Somalia, please tell us and I'll reblog it!

Be respectful in your comments. You can criticize a government without offending its people.

[gravalicious]

“Figure 1.2 A postcard of Somali men taken by A. Parodi in 1930.”

Source: Heather Merril - Black Spaces: African Diaspora in Italy  (2018: 48)

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Michael Mechanic at Mother Jones:

Mormons would probably be psyched. The Republican Party less so. I’m talking about what would happen if we embraced the idea, proposed by Donald Trump’s running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance—isn’t he funny?—of empowering families by giving parents of young children an extra vote for each child. Besides being likely unconstitutional (see the unanimous 2016 Supreme Court ruling in Evenwel v. Abbott, which upheld the 14th Amendment principle of “one person, one vote”) such a policy would be difficult to implement. Who gets the extra votes if there’s an odd number of kids and/or the parents are estranged or have opposing views? Who votes on behalf of stepkids—do they count? Adoptees? How about kids living with their grandparents? Noncitizen parents? Parents with Green Cards? Could undocumented parents vote on behalf of US-born offspring? And how would you verify all of it? To be fair, in an interview over the weekend, Vance clarified that his proposal was simply a “thought experiment.” Okay then! Let’s think it through.

Assuming this proposal were legal and workable, whom would it benefit? Certainly the Mormons, who are known for prolific procreation (in 2014, according to a Pew Research report, Mormon couples ages 40-59 had an average of 3.4 children vs. 2.2 for all Christians and 2.1 nationally—they also famously have a history of having too many spouses.) Mormons tend to be conservative and vote Republican. But only about 1.2 percent of Americans identifed as Mormons in 2022, per the Washington Post. So who else might benefit? Predicting voter preference and its impact on a given race is complicated and involves various interrelated factors: One must consider a given group’s cohesiveness, political tendencies, and likelihood of turnout, in addition to age, education, income, and geographical concentration—for example, Michigan’s Somali diaspora, Hawaii’s large Pacific Islander population, and Mexican Americans in the Southwest.

[...] I also poked around for useful data. The Census Bureau’s 2023 Current Population Survey breaks down, by race and income, households with children under 18. That’s useful, because income is a rough proxy for education, and families with less education tend to have more children, Frey told me.

Non-Hispanic whites are significantly under-represented among parent households with incomes of less than $75,000—which account for 38 percent of all families with young children—while Latinos are substantially over-represented. In the slightly larger and more educated middle tier, households with $75,000-$199,999 in income, Asians and non-Hispanic whites are slightly over-represented while Black and Hispanic households are slightly under-represented. In the high-income tier ($200,000-plus), non-Hispanic whites and Asians are strongly over-represented while Black and Hispanic households are strongly under-represented—but only 17 percent of all families with young kids fall into this high-income, high-education, and likely high-turnout group. [...] There's also an X-factor to consider: Might the promise of extra votes serve as an incentive for parents who might not otherwise do so to get out and exercise their patriotic duty, potentially narrowing ethnic and educational turnout disparities?

JD Vance’s experiment of permitting parents who have children to have extra votes might come back to bite him, as it could end up benefitting Democrats.

[queerafricans]

HOW THE SOMALI DIASPORA IS USING MUSIC AS A TOOL TO PIECE TOGETHER LOST HISTORIES

[ukrfeminism]

5 minute read

On 1st May this year, Johanita Dogbey, a 31-year-old Ghanaian British woman, was killed in broad daylight in Brixton, London. The man accused of attacking her, Mohamed Nur, a 33-year-old Somali British man, is currently in police custody and awaiting trial. Her death adds to a long list of Black women who have been found dead due to or under the suspicion of foul play in recent years: Darrell Buchanan, Blessing Olusegun and Valerie Forde, to name a few. With growing discourse surrounding the prevalence of Black femicide in the United States, following shocking revelations like the fact that Black women are four times as likely as white or Hispanic women to die a violent death, it’s time Britain recognised its own epidemic. On the surface, the data indicate no apparent racial disparities but a deeper look into the context of how these figures are produced points to a more complex and even dangerous reality for Black women in the UK. 

Understanding Black femicide

The World Health Organization (WHO) generally defines femicide as the “intentional murder of women and girls because they are women” but allows for broader definitions encompassing any killings of women and girls. The vast majority of women’s murderers are men, with ‘intimate femicide’ (i.e. intimate partner violence) being the most typical form. Worldwide, over 35% of all women’s murders are reported to have been committed by a former or current husband or boyfriend. Conversely, just 5% of male homicides are committed by a current or former intimate partner (this includes gay and bisexual men). Other common types of femicide comprise honour killings (occurring mainly in the Middle East, South Asia and their respective diasporas), dowry deaths (most prevalent in India) and non-intimate femicide — often with a sexual motivation. Accordingly, Black femicide can be understood as the intentional killing of Black women and girls on the basis of their race, gender or both; it can also include any Black female homicide victims. 

Looking at the global stats, we can see that in the US, Black women’s risk of homicide rivals that of Black men, with one dying on average every six hours in 2020. In South Africa, an average of nine women are killed every day, making it one of the most dangerous places in the world to live as a woman, particularly a Black woman. Predominantly Black Caribbean countries Antigua & Barbuda and Jamaica have the second and third highest femicide rates in the world, respectively, with El Salvador topping the list. 

I n the UK, we know that a woman is killed on average every three days but the frequency of said violence happening to Black women is unclear, given a dearth of intersectional reporting on the issue. For example, the 2020 Femicide Census, an archive of the “women who have been killed by men in the UK and the men who have killed them”, records the ethnicity of just 22 out of 110 victims. Of this figure, 16 were white and six were Asian. Without further context, the takeaway here would be that no Black women (or at least a much smaller proportion) were killed by men within this dataset, which could then be extrapolated to apply to Britain’s population as a whole. When speaking about this to a representative of nia, the anti-violence against women and girls (VAWG) charity that oversees The Femicide Census, they acknowledged this is a problematic conclusion: “The lack of meaningful, verified (i.e. official public record material) data on ethnicity is an ongoing problem. Data on race and ethnicity is drawn from police responses to Freedom of Information requests (FoIs). Ethnicity was provided in only one-fifth of police FoIs, and even then, the terms used are inconsistent, arbitrary, sometimes meaningless, archaic or downright offensive, for example, ‘Dark European’ or ‘Oriental’.”

‘Global majority’ is used as a collective term to describe those racialised as non-white, who make up approximately 85% of the world’s population. Anecdotal evidence and interpersonal experiences from anti-VAWG service providers and service users alike suggest femicide disproportionately impacts global majority women in the UK, including Black women, according to nia. However, without more precise figures to back up these ideas, the ability to identify culture-specific risk factors, barriers to access and best methods of providing support is limited. “Without such data, there will be no evidence base for the need for specialist by and for organisations, additional targeted resources and overhauling practice and policy which may reflect racist and sexist attitudes or institutional racism and sexism,” nia concludes. 

Inter-community issues present overlooked risk factors

Like other forms of violence against socially minoritised people, the line between what is and what isn’t an act of discrimination is often ambiguous. Dogbey’s death, for instance, has been framed as a completely “random attack” by media reports. Perhaps it simply was a case of wrong place, wrong time; perhaps not. Latoya Dennis, the founder of Black Femicide UK, thinks not, believing Dogbey’s killing to have been influenced by an underground culture of online inceldom and inter-community tensions between Somali and non-Somali Black groups. “I think there’s a strong incel community and I believe that a lot of Somali men are a part of that, from what I’ve seen online. I wouldn’t be surprised if the man who killed Johanita was a part of that community,” she tells us. Nur is reported to have (non-fatally) assaulted two other women and a man on 29th April, showing a gender bias in his crimes. When asked to expand, Dennis references hostile online encounters with Somali men on her platform after profiling the story of a Somali Bolt driver allegedly attempting to abduct a young, non-Somali Black woman. “That was the most backlash I’ve received through my work. I received a lot of threats and harassment, and I was also doxxed,” she explains. 

Sistah space

W hether or not this sentiment is correct, it highlights a valid sense of intra-racial rift within Black Britain that the media and institutions alike fail to interrogate in depth, leaving Black women at risk. Unbothered Editor L’Oréal Blackett speaks to an overreliance on the UK’s few Black journalists to cover Black stories as a partial factor in these gaps in mainstream coverage: “When I’ve worked at major publications, these kinds of stories are looked at as an inter-community issue. There’s a sense of ‘we can’t touch that’ within these white (and male)-dominated newsrooms.” She continues: “UK media is relying on a handful of Black journalists to cover everything that goes on in our communities.”

Sistah Space, a domestic violence charity advocating and campaigning for Black and mixed-race British women of African and Caribbean descent, also cites racial and cultural prejudices as major reasons why Black British women’s deaths don’t receive as much attention as the deaths of white British women: “The media categorically does not give Black women and domestic abuse enough attention. For example, media coverage of the Sarah Everard case was on every news source for a period of time. Can you name any Black women who have had the same amount of coverage or outcry?” 

It’s not just the media at fault here. As detailed above, there is an oversight when it comes to the interrogation and provision of race and ethnicity-specific insights from the government and police that potentially reflects apathetic and even racist (and sexist) attitudes towards female global majority concerns in this country. In March 2014, Valerie Forde, 45, and her 22-month-old baby were brutally murdered by Valerie’s ex-partner after her cries for help had been either downplayed or ignored by the authorities, exemplifying such failings. Six weeks prior to her death, Forde had told police that the then 53-year-old Roland McKoy had threatened to burn down her house with her and her baby inside. Instead of Forde’s warning being recorded as a threat to life, which would have required much closer monitoring, it was deemed a threat to property — a serious but far less urgent risk. Furthermore, BBC News reports that a civilian call handler failed to fully record and communicate critical information in the 999 call from one of Forde’s daughters on the day of the crime. Were it not for the “inaction” of authorities, Forde may have been alive today. 

Sistah Space believes this to be the case and is advocating for Valerie’s Law, a proposal which would implement “mandatory cultural competency training that accounts for the cultural nuances and barriers, colloquialisms, languages and customs that make up the diverse Black community”. In 2021, the organisation launched a video campaign to illustrate the unequal treatment of Black and white female domestic abuse victims by law enforcement. Research conducted by Sistah Space reveals that in the UK, 86% of women of African and/or Caribbean heritage have either been a victim of domestic abuse or know a family member who has been assaulted. Only 57% of victims, however, said they would report the abuse to the police, likely due to a historic lack of confidence in law enforcement among Black Britons. Meanwhile, March 2020 to June 2021 figures from Refuge, the country’s largest specialist domestic abuse organisation, show that Black women were 14% less likely than white survivors of domestic abuse to be referred to Refuge for support. 

Implementing meaningful change 

The man accused of killing Johanita Dogbey will not be standing trial until 29th April 2024, joining tens of thousands of backlogged cases in London alone that will not be fully reviewed for an average of over a year. With Dogbey’s story falling out of the mainstream news cycle just over a week after her death, it’s hard to imagine a society where Black femicide is given the consideration it deserves. As things stand, we rely on specialist media platforms like Unbothered to do the work in platforming these narratives and organisations like nia and Sistah Space to push for more comprehensive statistics and cultural awareness among governing bodies. A greater emphasis on Afrofeminist data will ultimately be the building block for more informed insights into the realities and concerns of Black women in the UK. We must continue striving to make this issue a top priority, not just for us but for everyone. 

[peonycats]

churan & turkran & ethiosom

churan: i lurve you churan...... again its so crazy to me that they've known each other for like 2k+ years and relations between these two long running empires were for the most part quite cordial, engaging in collaboration against border nation states and tribes and not really butting heads in terms of ambition 😺even nowadays china-iran ties are rather amicable!

turkran: I thought long and hard about where to put this in relation to churan, but I eventually came to the conclusion that even if churan have less friction personally and generally have been chilling for most of the time they've known each other, turkran have so much history (good and bad) and irl ties between their people and cultures that it makes up for that 🙏

ethiosom: it makes much less sense than the other two given the bad blood between these two but it's kinda funny how much these two irl nations rag on each other and yet i see somali and ethiopian diaspora frequently hanging out in the same spaces JKKDJSFKS anyways these two argue all the time over the smallest things but they've known each other for a very long time so there's some kind of begrudging familiarity in that, yknow?

[beardedmrbean]

A top House Republican called on Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) to resign Monday for delivering a speech in which her critics say she placed Somali interests ahead of American ones. 

“Ilhan Omar’s appalling, Somalia-first comments are a slap in the face to the Minnesotans she was elected to serve and a direct violation of her oath of office,” House Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-Minn.) wrote on X. “She should resign in disgrace.”

Omar, the first Somali American in Congress, appeared to assure her Somali American constituents that she would do everything in her power to prevent the disputed, breakaway Republic of Somaliland from entering into a sea-access deal with landlocked Ethiopia.

A clip of the Minnesota lawmaker went viral with over 2.6 million views after it was posted on X, with a translation saying Omar had said: “As Somalis, one day we will go after our missing territories.”

The congresswoman claims her remarks were lost in translation. 

“It’s not only slanted but completely off,” Omar said of the subtitles in a video of her speech shared by Republic of Somaliland Foreign Minister Rhoda Elmi. “But I wouldn’t expect more from these propagandists.”

Omar claims her remarks were lost in translation.

“While I am in Congress, no one will take Somalia’s sea,” Omar said during the Jan. 27 speech, according to a translation she deemed to be more accurate. “The United States will not back others to rob us. So, do not lose sleep over that.”

Elmi urged House leadership and Democrats to “take note of [Omar’s] public conduct,” arguing that the speech was “unbecoming [of] a United States Congresswoman.” 

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) slammed Omar for vowing to protect Somalia’s borders while opposing efforts to shore up the US-Mexico border.

“Terrorist sympathizer Ilhan Omar in her own words: Somalian first. Muslim second. She never mentions America,” Greene tweeted. 

Omar is facing a Democratic primary challenge for her seat in Congress launched by former Minneapolis City Council member Don Samuels. AP

“She flaunts using her position as congresswoman to protect Somalia’s border while our border is invaded by MILLIONS of illegals who are a danger to America,” the Georgia Republican added. “These people hate America and they’re so emboldened by the Democrats’ disdain for our country, they’re not even trying to hide it anymore.”

The Republic of Somaliland declared its independence from Somalia in 1991, but is not widely recognized internationally, including by the US. Omar wants to keep it that way. 

“No nation-state can survive if its states start to get involved in land lease negotiations with other countries without the consent of the federal government,” she wrote on X. “Somalis in Somalia and in the diaspora are united in that effort and I stand in solidarity with them. No amount of harassment and lies will ever change that.”

[ladyimaginarium]

Indigenous History Month ask game !

What is your Indigenous identity/identities?

Are you connected, semiconnected reconnecting or disconnected to your culture?

What is your favorite indigenous character? (Canon, headcanon and OC's are okay!)

What does your indigeneity mean to you?

Where are your traditional lands?

What's something that you'd like to see for indigenous representation in media and why?

Can you speak your traditional indigenous language(s)? If so, can you say something in it?

Can you share some traditional knowledge if possible?

If you're connected, semiconnected or reconnecting, can you share a favorite traditional story of your people?

What's an unpopular opinion you have?

What's an intracommunity discussion you'd want to see be talked about more?

Do you have any pet peeves surrounding your community?

How does your indigeneity effect your queerness?

How does your indigeneity affect your plurality, if you are plural and if applicable?

What are your peoples' architecture like?

If you could share one thing with your ancestors, what would it be?

Indigenous vampires or Indigenous werewolves?

What's something you'd want nonindigenous peoples to understand?

What is your faith, if applicable?

Do you practice your traditional indigenous religion?

If you don't practice your indigenous religion, what do you practice, if applicable?

What's something that you feel the loss of with colonization?

Do you own traditional attire?

What is your favorite cultural clothing?

Do you have plant & ecological knowledge?

What's something that makes you proud of your indigeneity?

How has decolonization impacted you?

How do you show up for your community?

Who's your favorite indigenous celebrity, if applicable?

What's something you'd want to say to your future descendants, biological or otherwise?

Note: this is by Indigenous people for Indigenous peoples ONLY! While this was mostly made for Indigenous peoples of Turtle Island, it's by no means exclusive to these groups, it's not specific to one culture, but nor is it open for all POC to use. This inherently includes First Nations, Métis, Inuit, Indigenous Americans, Alaska Natives, Greenlandic Inuit / Kalaalit Nunaat, Indigenous Mexicans, Indigenous Central Americans, Indigenous peoples of Abya Ayala (South America), Afroindigenous people in the diaspora (ie Black ndns, Black Americans, Black Canadians, Black South Americans, Black Carribeans, Black Mexicans, etc), Indigenous Africans (Maasai, Somalis, Tigrayans, Xhosa, Zulu, etc), African Diasporic Asians (ie the Siddi in India), Pasifika (Native Hawaiians / Kanaka Maoli, Polynesians, Melanesians, Micronesians, etc.), Aboriginal Australians & Torres Straits Islanders, Māori, Papuans, Black Austronesian peoples, colonized people in China (ie Tibetans, Uighurs, etc), the Ainu of Ainumoshir & Ryūkyūans/Okinawans of Ryūkyū in Japan, colonized people in India, Central Asia & Southeast Asia, Indigenous Taiwanese, peoples of West Asia (Indigenous Palestinians, Jewish people predominantly in the diasporas, Armenians, Kurds, etc.), Indigenous Europeans (Sámi, Karelians, Basque, Crimean Tatars, Irish Travellers, etc.), Indigenous Siberians, Romani & mixed race indigenous peoples! Do not use these for yourselves if you're not Indigenous in any way and especially not if you're white. Zionists, Kahanists, blood quantum purists & enrollment enforcers & assimilated Indigenous peoples who have no intention of connecting to their cultures whatsoever & do not fight for indigenous sovereignty DNI with this post. Please no discourse in the notes or with each other, I want us all to be kind to each other and to have fun with each other, ty!! 💕

[dreamieparadise]

There's this Somali Podcaster that my parents love watching, and it makes me laugh bc he keeps going "a-hah" for agreement. It just sounds like a delightful half laugh tbh? In my heart, this is what Yamamoto does too.

[zine-garden]

Indigenous Zines outside of America! Buy, share, and read zines by Indigenous people outside of America.

This probably overlaps with zines from outside of North America prompt, since that is where most of the Indigenous world exists, but humour me! Any zines made by Palestinians, Hmong, Sami, Somali, Tamil, Iloko, etc.? I'll also allow the inclusion of the diasporas of these groups to make this prompt easier!

[blueiight]

Do you happen to know a good book about black americans in France before WWI? Around the Belle Epoque?

i cant think off the top of my head anything specific but i like these sources taking a look at the belle epoque [sections pulled under readmore] ..if anyone has specifically what this person’s looking for id love to see

In the northern quarter of the Bois de Boulogne in February 1891, not far from the bridle paths where the fashionable women rode à l’amazone, an Englishman called John H. Hood positioned thirty-eight men and women from the Kingdom of Dahomey in West Africa in an animal enclosure in the zoological gardens. “Ethnographic exhibitions” were guaranteed money in the pot—crowds were always up a third, more francs clattering through the cash registers. Since one showman brought fourteen “Nubians” as foils to his wild animals in 1877, there had been Samis, Kalmuks, Araucanians, Somalis, Ashantis, and Senegalese. Their appearance was organized by the French government to pique the public’s interest in colonial expansion. The Society for Anthropology came to measure skulls and complain, in 1881, that they were not permitted to examine the genitals of the Tierra del Fuegians. In January 1891, the Nouveau Cirque’s pantomime was La Cravache (“The Whip”), featuring Chocolat [the stage name of Rafael Padilla, an Afro-Cuban man born into slavery turned famous performer in France during the Belle Epoque] as a servant arrested by a policeman who thinks he is a Somali escaped from the zoological gardens. That year, the zoo offered punters the female Dahomey soldiers, or N’Nonmiton, whom they called Amazons. “These famous warrioresses, strange and legendary, who appear to us like a fantastical vision,” enthused the pamphlet that accompanied the show, “in I know not what troubling vapors of an African mirage, are here, under our eyes, with their picturesque uniforms, their deadly weapons, their dance and their war games, their savage and valiant demeanor.” The N’Nonmiton wore long striped skirts and strings of beads that crisscrossed their torsos, and duly waved scimitars and muskets in drill, while the Parisians watched from outside the enclosure. The previous October, France had defeated Dahomey in a first colonial war. (from the second link)

This period saw the blossoming of print cultures in Africa and the African diaspora, particularly Anglophone areas, which ‘saw an explosion of writing and print, produced and circulated not only by the highly educated and publicly visible figures that dominate political histories of Africa but also by non-elites or obscure aspirants to elite status’, as the work of Karin Barber has outlined. These figures included ‘waged laborers, clerks, village headmasters, traders, and artisans’ who ‘read, wrote, and hoarded texts of many kinds’; ‘[l]ocal, small-scale print production became a part of social life’. What we observe here are not simply ‘isolated examples of the uses of literacy scattered across the continent but the history of a remarkably consistent and widespread efflorescence – a social phenomenon happening all over colonial Anglophone Africa at the same time and with comparable features’ (Barber 2006: 1–3). This flourishing of print cultures was not isolated to the continent. Following Reconstruction in the US there was an explosion in African American literacy and newspaper production: between 1865 and 1900, over 1,200 black newspapers were established (Marable 1991: 8). African American illiteracy rapidly dropped from seventy per cent in 1880 to 30.4 per cent in 1910 (Detweiler 1922: 6). During the early twentieth century, a largely bourgeois postbellum African American press gave way to an increasingly radical mass-circulation media. ‘Never before had so many African Americans purchased and read newspapers produced by and devoted to the interests of their race’, observes a study of this press. ‘Never before had the printed word had as much impact on the everyday lives of middle- and lower-class Blacks’ (Digby-Junger 1998: 263–4). The implications of this efflorescence of print for political affinity – as with the other movements of the period – are far more complex than the ‘nationalism’ allowed for in Benedict Anderson's original formulation. (from the first link)

[burlveneer-music]

Dur-Dur Band Int. - The Berlin Session - return (after decades) of a top Somali band

The first studio album of its kind since the golden days of Mogadishu came to a halt three decades ago. Glamorous discos and beachfront stages disappeared as the city was bombed to the ground. Like a sleeping giant patiently awaiting its revival, we can finally hear a new recording by the living representatives of that distinct era so far heard only on reissues. This record captures the historic reunion which took place in 2019 in Germany’s capital. London-based Dur-Dur Band Int. - itself an eight-piece powerhouse of Somali live-music - is backing three legendary singers. Sounding equally Asian as it does African, a definitive proto-Reggae groove channels the titans as they devotedly draw the bridge between the sorrow of all that was lost and the delight of a magic which survived. So Why Did We Have To Wait So Long To Hear This Album? By the end of the 1980s, Somalia’s capital (Xamar as the locals call it) was dancing its final dance. The musicians strived to keep it up as the country fell apart, but when the war eventually entered the capital, exile was inevitable. The national theatre was a battleground and the hotels became the backdrops for destruction, many remaining in ruin to this very day. Dur-Dur Band for example was then active in the 90s in nearby Addis Abeba, yet most of the scene was eventually dispersed over 4 continents. For a decade, Mogadishu’s veteran musicians remained dormant. For Xabiib, the glamour of stardom and Gucci had been replaced with an occasional wedding - singing alongside a backing track. In 2003, a fund-raiser was held in London for the reconstruction of Hargeisa’s National Theater which had been bombed to the ground during the war. Somali singers, actors and comedians from all over the diaspora were invited. A new Kooxda was formed around Dur-Dur’s founding member Abdillahi Cujeeri - calling itself Dur-Dur Band Int. Yet for the last twenty years they’ve been performing mostly within the Somali community. In 2015 Berlin-based Nicolas “Çaykh” Sheikholeslami was enticed by Somali music. Little did he know that his mixtape Au Revoir, Mogadishu Vol. 1 - Songs From Before The War would end up sparking a massive international interest in Somali music. Soon he was approached by Ostinato Records with the idea to create a legit compilation featuring those sounds. Thus, Sheikholeslami went on to co-curate ‘Sweet As Broken Dates: Lost Somali Tapes from the Horn of Africa’ which received a Grammy nomination in 2018. Berlin’s prestigious HKW took notice and granted him an opportunity to put together a concert with artists from the golden era. Luckily for us, Nicolas sensed the chance for a recording session to be arranged - and that is how we got this album.

Text by: Nicolas Sheikholeslami & Omri S. Shmulewitz of Spiritczualic Enhancement Center Vocals: Xabiib Sharaabi Vocals: Cabdinuur Alaale Vocals: Faadumina Hilowle Drums: Saciid Xuseen Congas: Saalax Xariiri Bass: Cabdillahi Cujeeri Keys: Yusuf Naaji Guitar: Nabil Sacaani Guitar: Cumar Teesiyow Saxophone: Morton Zakaria Claves: Akila Artwork: Muhyadin Sharafo (oil painting) & Ventral is Golden (design) Recorded: 21.02.2019 & 22.02.2019 Berlin at Butterama Studios in Neukölln by Daniel Nentwig Producer & Mixing: Nicolas Sheikholeslami