A01=Christina J. Woolner
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Author_Christina J. Woolner
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Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=AV
COP=United States
Delivery_Delivery within 10-20 working days
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eq_music
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Hargeysa
intimacy
Language_English
love
love songs
love-suffering
multivocality
PA=Available
Price_€20 to €50
PS=Active
softlaunch
Somali music
Somaliland
sound and affect
voice
Product details
- ISBN 9780226827391
- Weight: 367g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 24 Nov 2023
- Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
- Language: English
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An intimate account of everyday life in Somaliland, explored through an ever-evolving musical genre of love songs.
At first listen, both music and talk about love are conspicuously absent from Somaliland’s public soundscapes. The lingering effects of war, the contested place of music in Islam, and gendered norms of emotional expression limit opportunities for making music and sharing personal feelings. But while Christina J. Woolner was researching peacebuilding in Somaliland’s capital, Hargeysa, she kept hearing snippets of songs. Almost all of these, she learned, were about love. In these songs, poets, musicians, and singers collaborate to give voice to personal love aspirations and often painful experiences of love-suffering. Once in circulation, the intimate and heartfelt voices of love songs provide rare and deeply therapeutic opportunities for dareen-wadaag (feeling-sharing). In a region of political instability, these songs also work to powerfully unite listeners on the basis of shared vulnerability, transcending social and political divisions and opening space for a different kind of politics.
Taking us from 1950s recordings preserved on dusty cassettes to new releases on YouTube and live performances at Somaliland’s first postwar music venue—where the author herself eventually takes the stage—Woolner offers an account of love songs in motion that reveals the capacity of music to connect people and feelings across time and space, creating new possibilities for relating to oneself and others.
At first listen, both music and talk about love are conspicuously absent from Somaliland’s public soundscapes. The lingering effects of war, the contested place of music in Islam, and gendered norms of emotional expression limit opportunities for making music and sharing personal feelings. But while Christina J. Woolner was researching peacebuilding in Somaliland’s capital, Hargeysa, she kept hearing snippets of songs. Almost all of these, she learned, were about love. In these songs, poets, musicians, and singers collaborate to give voice to personal love aspirations and often painful experiences of love-suffering. Once in circulation, the intimate and heartfelt voices of love songs provide rare and deeply therapeutic opportunities for dareen-wadaag (feeling-sharing). In a region of political instability, these songs also work to powerfully unite listeners on the basis of shared vulnerability, transcending social and political divisions and opening space for a different kind of politics.
Taking us from 1950s recordings preserved on dusty cassettes to new releases on YouTube and live performances at Somaliland’s first postwar music venue—where the author herself eventually takes the stage—Woolner offers an account of love songs in motion that reveals the capacity of music to connect people and feelings across time and space, creating new possibilities for relating to oneself and others.
Christina J. Woolner is a Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellow in the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of Cambridge.
