Your say / fozia ismail
‘In my family, dried camel meat and tapes would be sent instead of letters’
I have always been interested in the way the Somali Diaspora would send cassette tapes back and forth between Somaliland and the UK, both during the civil war and after.
In my family, tapes would be sent instead of letters and when these tapes would arrive, they would often arrive with Muqalmad- dried camel meat, an important part of Somali nomadic culture. Family and friends would listen to the tapes and share the camel meat.
This was a joyful but also sometimes painful experience, which reinforced a kind-of living in between landscapes. For younger members of the family, there was also anxiety about what to record back to these strangers who were aunts and uncles you may have never met as well as the ability to communicate back in a mother tongue that you were not necessarily fluent in.
is needed now More than ever
The way food and sound transcended the physical geographical limits and the effort of the Somali community to do this has always fascinated me. This was a communal act – a person travelling between Somaliland and the UK would not just be responsible for passing aspects of material culture to their individual family, it would be for a range of families sharing the responsibility of keeping ties and cultural memory alive across hostile borders through food and the intimate voices of loved ones via analogue technology.
In 2019 I was fortunate enough to receive some funding from Arnolfini to explore this aspect of Somali history in Bristol.
What’s happened to these cassette tapes? Have people held on to them? What messages do they contain?
Credit: Paul Samuel White.
Over the course of six months, myself, Ayan Climi and Asmaa Jama and members of Bristol’s Somali communities researched and discussed a rich oral history that transcends borders between family and friends, something so relevant now in midst of lockdown. These tapes became a valuable vessel for the diaspora to communicate with families they were forced to leave behind, sharing stories ranging from day-to-day events to the intimacies of private life.
We worked with a range of Somali women elders in the workshops and explored themes including Somali food, the role of the camel in nomadic culture, weaving/ crafts migration (rural to urban), myths and folklore and gender roles.
We used projected images, printouts, textiles and Somali crafts as well as food to facilitate discussions. We wanted to create a soundscape that would envelop and surround us in the musicality of Somali women, whilst exploring the tensions of communication between multiple people and landscapes.
All these sessions were recorded on cassette tapes which were then edited to make a 360-degree soundscape which was shared last March before lockdown. We didn’t know then that we would be in a seemingly endless cycle of lockdown and isolation. When I listen to the soundscape and the voices of the women we worked with, I feel a sense of nostalgia for the face-to-face workshops and stories shared.
I hope we get to a time when we can share stories face to face again, in the meantime, you can learn more about the dhaqan collective project and the next stage of Camel Meat & Tapes funded by Arts Council at the Pervasive Media Studio Lunchtime talk on Friday 26 February.
Find out more by going onto dhaqan.org and listening to this podcast on Tape Letters produced with Caraboo Project in Bristol.
The dhaqan collective is a feminist art collective of Somali women, centring the voices of womxn and elders in our community, and privileging co-creation and collaboration. Dhaqan meaning ‘the common thread that connects Somali peoples to their ancestral homelands’ (A. A. Ilmi).
Fozia Ismail will be hosting a Lunchtime Talk at 1pm on Friday, February 26 live on Watershed’s YouTube channel. For more information, visit www.watershed.co.uk/studio/events
Main photo: Paul Samuel White
Read more: ‘I want to see more Somali girls going to University’
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