One would wonder why some of the regions, towns, locations, and even water wells within the Somali Peninsula enjoy repeatitive honorific oratorical praises and adorations over others in music and poetry. While it all depends on the poet or the composer of the music in question, the elevation of one location over other historically significant places requires deep scrutiny.
Regardless of where the composer of the dhaanto hails from---dhaanto, an ancient reggae-like folklore dance that was a great fete for camel herders, still remains exclusive to Somalis alone and profoundly towers above other modern plays to this present day.
In Somali ethnomusicology, dhaanto is best known for being a folkloric dance that is played without instruments. Instead, hand-clapping and foot-stamping create fine-tuned, well-rehearsed, marvelously orchestrated and soul-piercing spontaneous merriments of feelings of compassion or utter aggressions that could have consequences depending on the linguistic exposition used.
Whether created by Fidhin or Baarleex, "Harar iyo Hawaash Allahayow", is a play cum supplication beseeching the Creator to release the two strategic towns in Ethiopia with heavy Somali presence, from the shackles of foreign domineering. Perhaps, the play came to fore after the devastating 1977-78 Somalia-Ethiopia War.
Somali poetry surpasses the firmly recorded poetic performances of present developed nations whose theatrical exhibitions have been in the limelight since historical antiquity. Not until Richard Burton recorded Somalia as a the "Land of Poets", did the world recognize the uniqueness of the Somali language.
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