Somali Liberation Songs

Abstract

The Republic of Somali has recently been conducting a militant campaign for the reunification of ‘the five parts of the Somali nation’—British Somaliland and Italian Somalia (already united), French Somaliland, the Ethiopian regions of the Ogaden, the Haud, and the Reserved Area, and the Northern Frontier District (N.F.D.) of Kenya. The two principal weapons in this campaign have been diplomacy and the radio. This article is concerned with one aspect of the radio war—the series or Somali songs and poems broadcast regularly between September and December 1963 from Mogadishu, and to a lesser extent from Radio Cario.