Maryam Mursal
Maryam Mursal مريم مرسل | |
---|---|
Birth name | Maryan Mursal |
Born | 1 January 1950 Somalia | (age 74)
Genres | Somali music |
Instrument(s) | vocals, composer |
Years active | 1965s–present |
Labels | Real World Records |
Maryam Mursal (Somali: Maryan Mursal, Arabic: مريم مرسل) (born 1 January 1950) is a Somali composer and vocalist.
Biography
Mursal grew up in Somalia in a Muslim family with four daughters. Mursal's family was originally from Galmudug Somalia, and is from the Madhibaan clan.
As a teenager, she broke with tradition and began singing professionally in Mogadishu. She performed in nightclubs and her brand of music, featuring a mix of blues, soul, Somali and Arabic influences, known as Somali jazz, became popular across the country. Performing primarily solo, she also collaborated with Waaberi, a 300-member music and dance troupe associated with the Somali National Theatre. Later, after having criticized Somalia's then ruling military government, she was banned from singing for two years, and made her living driving a taxi.
During the subsequent civil war in her homeland, Mursal and her five children moved to neighboring Djibouti, where she found asylum in the Danish embassy. It was this odyssey that provided the gem of her solo recording The Journey, with guitars, sequencers and back-up vocals from Peter Gabriel.
Mursal still lives abroad, now residing in UK. She has toured Europe with Waaberi and appeared with Nina Simone. Her work has been produced by Peter Gabriel's Real World record label.
Discography
- New Dawn album
- The Journey
- Indho caashaq (love eyes)
- 1964 first song
Quotes
- "Traditional music is very important to me but I was also listening to people like Ray Charles, The Beatles, everything."
- "We as artists are responsible if something wrong is taking place in our society. It's very important for us to speak up, even though we may have to do it with a double tongue. We have to speak out for our people."
- "I was always the first woman. I was the first woman singing Somali jazz, I was the first star, and I was the first to drive a taxi! I was the first to drive a lorry, and now I'm the first woman from Somalia to have an international record."[1]
See also
- Waaberi
- Radio Mogadishu
- Radio Hargeisa
- Music of Somalia
- Abdullahi Qarshe
- Mohamed Sulayman Tubeec
- Mohamed Mooge Liibaan
References
- ^ Polly de Blank (July 8, 2005). "Somali star's road to Eden". London: BBC News. Retrieved 2005-07-08.
External links
- BLP articles lacking sources from April 2020
- All BLP articles lacking sources
- Articles with short description
- Short description is different from Wikidata
- Articles with hCards
- Articles containing Somali-language text
- Articles containing Arabic-language text
- All articles with dead external links
- Articles with dead external links from May 2017
- Articles with permanently dead external links
- Articles with ISNI identifiers
- Articles with VIAF identifiers
- Articles with BNF identifiers
- Articles with BNFdata identifiers
- Articles with GND identifiers
- Articles with LCCN identifiers
- Articles with MusicBrainz identifiers
- 1950 births
- Living people
- Real World Records artists
- 20th-century Somalian women singers
- Somalian Muslims
- 21st-century Somalian women singers
- Somalian expatriates in the United Kingdom