Somali songs reveal why musical crate digging is a form of cultural archaeology
Cratedigging isn’t merely ‘record shopping’ though. It’s a hunt for the DNA of a popular song you’re in love with. An addiction to origins.
A recent compilation album of 1970s/80s music from the Horn of Africa, "Sweet as Broken Dates: Lost Somali Tapes”, is a great example of this. Half of the compilation is sung by women, their voices often compared in Somali poetry to the "sweetness of broken dates”. The album’s 15 songs, coming from cassette tapes and master reels, had to literally be dug up from shelters after being hidden to protect it during Somalia’s two decade civil war.
This astonishing story goes back to
1988, when Somalia’s military dictator Siad Barre responded with air
strikes to the Somaliland region which was agitating for independence.
Barre targeted Radio Hargeisa in Somaliland’s capital city to prevent
any kind of central communication system that could organise a
resistance.
A few brave broadcasters knew that the archives with
their more than half a century of Somali music had to be preserved.
Thousands of cassettes and reels were quickly removed. They took them to
neighbouring Djibouti and Ethiopia and buried them deep under the
ground to withstand even the most powerful airstrikes.
These audio
artefacts were excavated from their shelters only very recently. Some
are now kept in the 10,000-strong cassette tape archive of the Red Sea
Foundation in Hargeisa.
A team from Ostinato Records, a New York-based label that documents music from the African continent and diaspora, digitised a large portion of the archive.
Historical grandeur
Ostinato
Records founder Vik Sohonie recently expressed the importance of
reviving and sharing old Somali music to illuminate Somalia’s historical
grandeur.
The most defining feature of the archive was its
ability to transport our hearts and minds to Mogadishu of the 1970s and
1980s, when the coastal capital glistened as the ‘Pearl of the Indian
Ocean’, when wine and cosmopolitanism flowed freely…
He
highlighted the importance of the unseen cultural archaeology that crate
diggers do and the impact this work might have in broader society.
"Sweet as Broken Dates” is a powerful example. I’m talking as a digger
myself – we actively archive and curate the stories and the experiences
of the people in our own ways.
Crate diggers often build huge
collections of rare and forgotten records that contain the stories and
experiences of people whose stories have not made it into our society’s
official historical memory. These musical tales are often
recontextualised through sampling or curated for the dance floor where
they find new life.
As an Afrofuturist scholar I liken crate
diggers to the "Data Thief” in John Akomfrah’s 1996 documentary "The
last angel of history”. He travels across time to make archaeological
digs for fragments of history that hold the key to the future. Music
plays a prominent role in exploring and shaping the future through
engaging with the counter-histories encoded in historical artefacts such
as records.
I also see parallels between crate diggers and the
custodians of the ancient Manuscripts of Timbuktu. The manuscripts are
key to preserving an alternative understanding of knowledge production
from the African continent so that we might understand Africa
differently to the unjust general imperialist history that is often
paraded as the only account of our past.
Forgotten records
As
a crate digger, I’ve come to understand that the forgotten records we
often find in the dingiest of places can contain alternative
perspectives and social commentary on particular movements, epochs or
historical events.
Our record finds allow us to experience the
sound, the consciousness and the ambience of forgotten times and places.
They provide a unique way of engaging with the past – for the crate
digger and the listener alike. While a book might provide information
about a particular place and time a record might also provide a unique
sensory experience.
Each crate digger essentially builds a
personal library of sonic texts that often cannot be found on the
internet or in the official archives. This makes them custodians of
these unique cultural artefacts.
Building and preserving these
collections can become a lifelong obsession. We recycle them for present
and future generations to enjoy, admire and understand.
Unlike
book collectors who might keep their collections private, many crate
diggers share their discoveries. They take them into class rooms.
Hip-hop musicians like 9th Wonder (who teaches at Duke University in
North Carolina) and Questlove (New York University) come to mind. Others
sample them to great effect, like leftfield producers such as Madlib
and J Dilla. Most diggers simply play them out in DJ sets at their local
club.
In genres like hip hop, house and techno, crate digging
plays an important part in finding the source material for sampling. The
source material is not only sampled for its sonic qualities, but also
often for the message or story it contains, the social references it
makes and the intertextuality it provides. Within these genres crate
diggers are respected as sonic archaeologists and music scholars.
Somali songs reveal why musical crate digging is a form of cultural archaeology
Crate diggers are cultural archaeologists who dedicate their time, money and energy to collecting musical artefacts that provide alternative histories from the fringes of society. They frequent record stores, flea markets, garage sales, charity sh