MARYAM MURSAL Performing this Sunday at CELEBRATING SANCTUARY

[me]

MARYAM MURSAL

performing this Sunday at

CELEBRATING SANCTUARY

 

- Spread the word & forward please! -

 

 

This Sunday, 17 June 2007, 2 - 7pm

Bernie Spain Gardens, Upper Ground, South Bank, London SE1 (adjacent to Oxo Tower Wharf)

Nearest train/tube: Blackfriars, Southwark, Waterloo

Admission: FREE

Celebrating Sanctuary is part of Refugee Week (18-24 June) and the Coin Street Festival

 

Maryam Mursal will be performing on the Sanctuary Stage at 5pm.

 

Few have a more dramatic tale to tell than Maryam Mursal, Somalia's powerful and hugely popular female vocalist. Maryam began singing as a teenager in Mogadishu in 1966, the first woman in a deeply male-dominated Islamic society. Brought up in the Muslim faith, she was steeped in the traditional music of her country - a remarkable hybrid sound of African and Arabic influences created by centuries of cross-cultural fertilization between migrating nomadic tribes. But from her earliest years she also eagerly absorbed every influence she could find such as Ray Charles, The Beatles and Etta James.

Before her stunning voice could be heard in the west, Maryam was forced to spend seven months crossing the Horn of Africa with her five children as she fled the civil war, desperate to escape the anarchy, death and starvation that was destroying her country. She and her young family hitched rides on trucks, rode on donkeys and walked - out of Mogadishu, the Somalian capital, across Kenya, through Ethiopia, recrossing Somalia again and eventually arriving in Djibouti where she was finally given asylum by the Danish embassy. She eventually reached the UK and has since created two mighty albums on the Real World label.

One day Maryam hopes to return home to Somalia. "The first good thing I hear about my country, the first suggestion that it is changing, and I will go back - and quickly. It might take five years or even ten years but one day things will change. Everybody needs their country. At home you can be a star but then as a refugee you are looked at like a dog. I am a refugee but I am also a singer. That is my job and that is how I survive."

 

Marking the beginning of Refugee Week, Celebrating Sanctuary is an extraordinary event which gathers together musicians, dancers and artists from all corners of the globe to celebrate the positive cultural contribution of refugees to the UK. Now in its eight year, Celebrating Sanctuary demonstrates that such a vibrant panorama of sight, sound, aroma and taste would not exist had it not been for the UK’s hard won tradition of providing sanctuary to those fleeing persecution from many parts of the globe. For full line-up and more info:

 

http://www.myspace.com/celebratingsanctuary

[Valenteenah.]

Thanks.

 

It's meant to be a nice, warm Sunday as well, I'A.

[Aaliyyah]

I am a fan of Maryan Mursal. Totally love her songs.

 

u guys have fun eh.

 

wa salaamu alaikum

[roobleh]

I thought Maryan quit singing during the Somali-Taliban takeover of Mogadisho. Isn't that right?

[Socod_badne]

^I don't know but what is our point?

 

 

BTW, the Taliban are Pashtun tribesman. Last time I checked there were no Pashtuns taking over Mogadishu.

[Miskiin-Macruuf-Aqiyaar]

 

A still image of a very young, hip Maryan Mursal Mataan taken in, probably, late '70s.

 

Waxaa horey u arkay cajaladihii hore laga soo duubay gabdhihii fanaaniinka ahaa sida Seynab Cige, Khadro Daahir, Binti Gacal iyo Saado Cali. Maan, time does indeed ravage people.