NURSE. FIGHTER. GARAGEROCK REBEL ON THE SOMALILAND FRONTLINE… MEET SAHRA HALGAN
IT’S 30 DEGREES in Hargeisa, and Sahra Halgan is spending a slow Friday afternoon recovering from a concert she hosted in Somaliland’s capital the night before. “During the war, we lost all our musicians,” she laments. “Today, if you are a bad singer, you use a producer, they give you a nice voice. You sing like someone who can sing, but you can’t sing live. At my arts centre you have to sing live. Tell everyone to come. I invite them.”
It’s an enticing proposition: musically, Hargeisa lies at the heart of Africa’s funkiest region, bordered and influenced by Djibouti, Ethiopia and Somalia, the latter claiming Somaliland as its own. With decolonisation, Somaliland (compact and British) and Somalia (sprawling and Italian) were united in 1960, with an Italy-approved government that grew increasingly authoritarian. Something had to give: Somaliland rebelled; Somalia tried to crush the insurrection but was then engulfed in its own civil war; Somaliland declared independence, and still does, but the international community turned its back.
Halgan was a teenager when she joined the liberation movement in the late 1980s. “Sometimes you don’t have a choice. We were under bombardment, so I became a nurse, putting stitches in wounds. We didn’t have painkillers so I sang to try to give relief to the patients. They asked me to sing on the radio to help the morale of our fighters. Singing can be as useful as a big artillery.”
As war swept the country, Halgan fled to France, where she got a job helping fellow refugees in Lyon, and would sing to them.
“Under bombardment, we didn’t have painkillers so I sang to try to give relief to the patients.”
SAHRA HALGAN
Once again, her voice led to greater opportunities: she met guitarist Maël Salètes and percussionist Aymeric Krol, and the Sahra Halgan Trio was born, recording Faransiskiyo Somaliland, a blend of traditional rhythms, desert ululations and garage band rock, in 2015. Four years later, with Waa Dardaaran, they hit a groove that combined the snaking guitar lines of Tinariwen with an undeniably punk-like energy. Halgan, meanwhile, dominates any stage with the grace required of a daughter of a country that prides itself on its poetry.
She laughs explaining the schism between traditional Somaliland lyrics and rock’n’roll. “In my culture, you can’t just sing ‘I love you’. Not directly. The first time you meet someone, you have to explain your feelings: ‘I see you and the sky is blue, the birds are green.’ You have to go around and around. Love is the last word.”
More important to Halgan, however, is reaching an audience that knows nothing about her home.
“I like it when people listen, then ask me where Somaliland is. My music is not just for dancing or making money, I want people to know my life and to talk about peace and reconciliation.”
Sahra Halgan’s Hiddo Dhawr is released on Danaya Music on March 29.