Book launch & discussion: Love Songs in Motion: Voicing Intimacy in Somaliland
Hybrid event: to attend via webinar, please register using the link below.
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.

press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/L/bo205552325.html
Date: 15 May 2024, 16:00
Venue: 13 Bevington Road, 13 Bevington Road OX2 6NB
Venue Details: Seminar room, African Studies Centre
Speakers: Christina Woolner (Cambridge), Amina-Bahja Ekman (UCL)
Organising department: Centre for African Studies
Organiser: Jason Mosley (University of Oxford)
Part of: Northeast Africa Forum seminar series
Booking required?: Recommended
Booking url: https://events.teams.microsoft.com/event/8c594a39-a31a-404a-8a41-cd56fffa669f@cc95de1b-97f5-4f93-b4ba-fe68b852cf91
Audience: Public
Editor: Jason Mosley