The Journey
Maryam Mursal
Real World through Festival
Review by Norm Dixon
With this album, Maryam Mursal takes her place amongst the great contemporary women singers from Africa, such as Miriam Makeba, Angelique Kidjo and Oumou Sangare. Mursal, who hails from war-torn Somalia, is adept at both traditional and modern variations of her country's music. The Journey highlights her pop repertoire.
Somalia is a predominantly Islamic country, and Mursal's singing style is steeped in this influence. She creates fantastic dance-floor fillers by blending brass-laden Afro-funk (think Fela), swirling North African pop (similar to Algerian rap great Khaled) and African-American rhythm and blues.
Mursal's voice is deep and strong with a "lived-in" quality not unlike that of her hero, r&b belter Etta James.
To make all this even more palatable to late-'90s clubbers, the technobeats are laid on a little thick, and the arrangements are a bit lush, but not enough to smother the essential elements of modern Somali funk.
Western and African instruments are given equal weight in the mix. Listen for some rather delightful contributions from the accordion and violin.
While The Journey may seem to be just a very good dance album, its story goes much deeper. It is the culmination of Mursal's remarkable escape from the anarchy that has engulfed her homeland.
Mursal began singing while a teenager in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, in 1966. She was the first woman to become a music star in a conservative, male-dominated society. She challenged accepted notions of what was a permissible role for a woman and what was admissible in music. Her synthesis of traditional and modern music was soon dubbed "Somali jazz".
Perhaps it was inevitable that Mursal's rebellion against the status quo would extend into the political arena. As the brutal Siad Barre dictatorship increased its repression, Mursal responded.
"Ulimada" (The Professors), a song that attacked the dictatorship, led the regime to ban her from performing. With children to support, Somalia's biggest music star drove taxis to survive.
"Ulimada" appears on the 1997 release, New Dawn (Real World), recorded with the remnants of Waaberi, a huge troupe of singers, dancers, musicians and actors attached to the Somalian National Theatre, which was scattered in exile after the civil war. New Dawn highlights Mursal's traditional repertoire.
In 1991, a popular uprising overthrew the US-backed Barre. The west refused to come to the aid of the Somali people.
In the final period of the Barre regime, virtually all foreign aid was halted, and UN aid agencies withdrew. The UN and the west ignored warnings that only a massive injection of aid could relieve the widespread hunger and defuse the civil war over control of scarce food supplies.
Mursal's escape involved an epic seven-month trek through deserts and mountains, on foot and donkey, until she and her five children at last arrived in Djibouti, where she was granted asylum by the Danish embassy. Heard singing in a refugee camp in Denmark, Mursal was soon recording for Peter Gabriel's Real World label.
The Journey contains songs about Mursal's people's experiences and her own remarkable flight, based on a journal she maintained while travelling (so the promo material says). It is a testament to the Somali people's courage and determination.
It would be great to describe in more detail the lyrics of Mursal's songs but, as is the norm these days with many "world music" releases, no lyrics are provided in the liner notes. Western recording companies — even "alternative" and "aware" ones like Real World — still do not give their Third World artists the rudimentary courtesy of allowing them to present their message.
Too often, it seems, the industry seeks to market "exotic" ambience for designer middle-class living rooms, rather than genuine global cultural understanding and solidarity.