Violeta Ruano Portraits of Saharawi Music

Long description:

Recordings in this collection can be played by anyone.

Portraits of Saharawi Music is the result of six months of ethnographic fieldwork in Saharawi refugee camps, in south-west Algeria, during 2013 and 2014. The collection includes a variety of music recordings with the aim of showcasing the rich cultural heritage of the Saharawi community living in exile since 1975, when they were forced out of their homeland, Western Sahara. Known as Africa's last colony, the Saharawi’s land is to this day still occupied by Morocco and pending decolonisation.

The recordings in Portraits of Saharawi Music were made over different sessions. These were organised in collaboration with the Saharawi Ministry of Culture, which is responsible for promoting preservation projects in the camps to fight against the disappearance of their culture. Violeta Ruano travelled to the five different camps (wilayas) with a translator and met musicians in their homes or the local cultural centres. There was not any particular stylistic focus or constraint; musicians were asked to choose the songs they felt were most representative of traditional and modern Saharawi culture. As a consequence, this unique collection is a collaborative and eclectic project that portrays the musical diversity of Saharawi culture whilst documenting the history of their struggle for independence. All the songs are sung in the local Arabic dialect, Hassaniya.

In Portraits of Saharawi Music, most recordings are accompanied by a photograph taken by Violeta Ruano which portrays the musician during the recording session. Recordings have been indexed by performer, instrument and genre. The instrument category references the instruments used in the performance even though in some cases, the musicians stated that the original songs had other instrumentation. The lack of resources in the refugee camps forces musicians to constantly improvise for example by playing percussion on metal plates or plastic buckets. In the genre category, songs have been categorised according to the subject of their lyrics, with the exception of the instrumental pieces. In the cases where the Saharawi community has a name for the specific genre, the term in Hassaniya has also been included. The ‘Traditional (misc.)’ section groups songs that deal with a particular subject.