|
Back to Articles
Event News 2012.07.10 5th Annual Hargeysa International Bookfair
Clarinet Road in Hargeisa, Somaliland
This week I will collaborate with some of wonderful Somali musicians. The short performances will be at the 5th Hargeysa International Bookfair. My first trip to Africa, this is possibly the first visit by a New Orleans musician to Somaliland, the most stable of the regions in the "Horn of Africa" that declared its independence from greater Somalia in 1991. To prepare, during my stays in London, I met several times with Ahmed Ismail Hussein Hudeydi. The "King of the Somali Lute" (Kaban or Oud), Hudeydi patiently taught me his compositions phrase by phrase in his London home. It will be my great pleasure and honor to be a part of this multi-cultural event and bring my music and the spirit of New Orleans to a place where most music and poetry was suppressed during Siad Barre's dictatorship until his fall in the early 1990s. Hyudedi, my teacher of Somalian music traditions.
A weekly dialogue about the music industry and issues pertaining to the cultural workforce.
| 
