As the 2012 WOMADelaide Festival is in full swing at Botanic Park in Adelaide, Into The Music visits the music and politics of Mariem Hassan, ‘The Voice of Western Sahara’. With two electric guitars and two ground-drums played by women, her band has synthesized the spirit of traditional desert blues to drive her music into the 21st century. Mariem explores blues, jazz and contemporary sounds as no other Sahrawi musician ever has.
Her concert at WOMADelaide 2010 introduced Australians to a powerful artist singing about the political struggle of her people, inhabitants of the Western Sahara which was annexed by Morocco in 1975. And Into The Music was there recording as Mariem’s intense voice led audiences down mysterious paths where tragedy meets tenderness.
Producer Sherre DeLys talks to Mariem at WOMADelaide about her music and her journey from desert refugee camps to the world stage.
Producer: Sherre DeLys
Engineer: Mark Don
Radio National (Australia), 10 march 2012
MARIEM HASSAN: MUSIC IS MY WEAPON, PART 2
Mariem Hassan, known as ‘the voice of Western Sahara’, sings about the Arab Spring and her people’s struggle for independence from Morocco. The formerly nomadic Saharawi people these days live divided across occupied Western Sahara and in exile on Algerian lands. Into The Music joined Mariem on a rare trip into the heart of a Saharawi refugee camp where she performed to commemorate the Saharawi protest that Noam Chomsky has called ‘the beginning of the Arab Spring’.
Producer: Sherre DeLys
Engineer: Mark Don
Radio National (Australia), 10 march 2012