Mention Blues and my heart trembles with the anguish of personal past and present turmoil. Born in the Mississippi Delta, the fact for me is that it was first delivered in Kansas City, Missouri–The City of Fountains–the city where my four children were born and the home of former President Harry Truman who dropped the Atomic Bombs on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan during WWII in 1945.
In the Somali song Qooraansi–a song that resembles the Blues of Kansas City having rhythmical beats that instills sudden depression, sadness, and melancholic feelings and whose vocalists are Sahra Ahmed Jama–the “Queen of Voice” and male singer Fuad Omar–a no nonsense self-proclaimed man with indescribably sensational voice recount the pain and anguish experienced by his female lover. While unearthing her hidden secrets, he clearly tells her that her glances and visualizations are no cure for hunger and deprivation. To him, she has no symptomatic ailments and that it is her self-pride and nonsensical elevation that are lowering her self-worth and human value. Her perspiration in cold weather and shivering in the scorching heat and her concealment of her personal affairs are indicators of deliberate painful injections since she is not a patient of diagnosable infirmity but one derived from sheer stupidity.
Aggravated by his ludicrous lambasts of her condition, she poetically and meticulously engages him using her melodious voice to further deliver her in-depth knowledge of love’s devastation in recorded history. In response to his revelations of the ailments that afflicts her, she analytically begins reminding him that his rhetorical language is immensely a terrifying issue and surreptitiously bereft of philosophical help but flatly platitudinous since love has been the mastermind of the death of Qays and Elmi and Qarshe and Ismail, and Ali Sugulle and many others that have not been documented.
No doubt, love is a killer psychological disease that has evaded human perception, though in Somali traditional psychic observations, human-to-human concupiscence has been in existence since human creation. Prostitution, the second oldest tradition, did not simply evolve vacuously but from human soul’s attraction to desire for a partner. In a conversation with a gentleman who seemed to be well connected to some of the refugee youth from Somalia in Kenya, his keen observation of the many who have gone haywire must not be taken lightly.
Working in cahoots with experts in thaumaturgy, a practice Somalis refer to as Ayaana or Boorana has gained momentum in recent years. Young ladies abandoned by Diaspora vacationers arrive in modern vehicles with tinted windows seeking the help of voodoo experts who intervene through abracadabra–a form of demonic invocation where the practitioner, after renouncing Islam, performs urinary ablution that catapults him into the unknown satanic realm. Presenting an unwashed shirt of the culprit, an underwear, a T-shirt or any other wearable garment allows the Voodooist to extract perspiration for ease of deporting the vulturous Diasporan. Though paganistic, the use of magic has been overwhelmingly spreading among Somalis since early 1991 when the Somali central government collapsed.
The practice of magic is not only restricted to the African people because, it is widespread and remains a driving force among disbelievers. It is used among the Māori and the Trobriander who are Melanesian people of the Kiriwina (Trobriand) Islands who are known for practicing heresy, witchcraft, shamanism, Vodou, and superstition.[i] That’s not all, anyway. Somali music is mostly divided into Qaraami, Qaaci and Jazz and other traditional types that bring together many players like Saar and Dhaanto, and theatrical dances and humorous ones. The major instrument is the non-electrical type called Kaban. Likewise, Somali musicians use pianos, trumpets, and drums to make their music captivating.
In
the song “Sida faras Bullaale” by vocalist Abdi Tahlil Warsame, he
describes his lover using metaphorical language that is hard for modern youth
to comprehend its meaning. Other than enjoying the voice of the vocalist and
the deafening noise from the musical instruments, the young refugee confounded
by invisible love that penetrates his or her psychiatric dimensions, may be
hard to postulate.
Like
the horse of Bullaale*
That
has never experienced drought
Browsing
in Nugaal Valley
Overwhelmed
by fatness all over
Or
immaculately sitting undisturbed
After
being fed to the fullest
The
navel and chest emblazoned
Is
when the skin undergoes melanophores
While
the tail brushes the ground…
The vocalist is describing his female lover who has never experienced hunger and deprivation in Bullaale because of the abundance of food and other necessities. Fat and close to obesity after years of being a solitudinarian, resulting from loneliness due to the absence of her male lover, she remains seated in one place undisturbed. Her chest is so beautiful such that her bosoms remain visible to him alone. After years of feeding on the best nutritiously managed balanced diet, her skin experiences melanophores–change of skin pigmentation that catches the eye of every man in search of a partner. Even though human beings have no tails, obviously, she is approaching a stage of becoming steatopygous–for it is beyond reasonable doubt that Somali men of aforetimes had great admiration for girls with big buttocks and fatty thighs.
[i] Britannica, T.
Editors of Encyclopaedia (2015, October 26). Trobriander. Encyclopedia
Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Trobriander.
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