Mariem Hassan

Mariem Hassan is a Sahrawi singer and lyricist from Es Smara, Western Sahara. She is born in 1958 and dies in 2015.

Background

She grows up in a nomadic family as the third of ten siblings. Music and poetry have an important place in her family, and several relatives are singers, poets or dancers. She usually sings in Hassaniyya, the Arabic dialect spoken mainly in Western Sahara and Mauritania, and sometimes in Spanish, a choice linked to the former Spanish colonial history of Western Sahara.

After the Green March and the Madrid Accords in 1975, she moves with her family first to Meharrize and then to the Sahrawi refugee camps in Tindouf, Algeria. There she works as a nurse. Three of her brothers are killed during the Western Sahara War. She remains in the camps until 2002, when she moves to Spain for work and health reasons, living first in Barcelona and then Sabadell with her husband and sons. She later returns to Western Sahara before her death.

Music career

Hassan joins the musical group Shahid El Hafed Buyema in early 1976. After the death in combat of El-Ouali Mustapha Sayed, the group becomes Shahid El Uali. She tours with the band in many countries and performs at cultural events and world music festivals. In 1998, when the group disbands, she begins her solo career with two songs on A pesar de las heridas, released by the Spanish label Nubenegra.

For later concerts in Europe she performs with Leyoad, a group that includes guitarist Nayim Alal. Their live work leads to the collaboration album Mariem Hassan con Leyoad, recorded in 2000 and released in 2002. She contributes to Medej in 2004, followed by extensive touring in Europe, including Barcelona, Madrid, Leipzig, Helsinki, Brussels, Zurich and Antwerp.

Her first full solo album, Deseos, is released in 2005 on Nubenegra. It interprets traditional Haul music in a personal way, and includes the song “La Tumchu anni”, described as a desert blues track. During this period, the producer and lead guitarist Baba Salama dies of leukaemia before the album is published, and Hassan is treated for breast cancer. She is hospitalised in Spain in March 2005.

Shouka, released in 2010, draws deeply on Haul and the roots of Azawan music while also bringing in western influences. The title song is structured as a cantata and responds, paragraph by paragraph, to Felipe González’s 1976 speech at the Sahrawi refugee camps. Some critics compare her sound to Tuareg bands such as Tinariwen, while others reject the comparison.

In 2012 she releases El Aaiun Egdat (El Aaiun on fire), which is inspired by Sahrawi protests around the Gdeim Izik protest camp and the Arab Spring. The album marks a shift in her music, adding blues and jazz elements to traditional haul structures. Several songs use lyrics by older Sahrawi poets in exile, including Ali Bachir and Lamin Allal. The album reaches number one in the World Music Charts Europe in July 2012.

Performances, projects and media

Hassan performs at WOMEX 2005 in Newcastle and at several WOMAD festivals, including WOMAD Las Palmas de Gran Canaria 2008, WOMAD Cáceres 2008, WOMAD Charlton Park 2009, WOMAD Sicily 2009, WOMADelaide 2010 and WOMAD New Zealand 2010. She also appears in March 2011 in Caracas during Sahrawi Cultural Week, and later tours Europe to promote El Aaiun Egdat, including performances in Helsinki, Chiasso, Malmö, Gothenburg, Portugal, Marseilles, Rome, Salento, Belgium and Spain.

In 2013 she completes a Sahrawi oral history project, Cuéntame Abuelo – Música, alongside work promoting El Aaiun Egdat. Her life and work are the subject of the 2007 documentary Mariem Hassan, la voz del Sáhara. In 2010, Link TV produces a short documentary on her music and activism as part of Rappers, Divas and Virtuosos: New Music from the Muslim World. In 2014, Calamar Edicion y Diseño publishes her official biography as the graphic novel Mariem Hassan – Soy Saharaui, written and illustrated by Gianluca Diana, Andromalis and Federica Marzioni.

Themes and importance

Hassan is widely recognised as a major Sahrawi voice. Her songs address exile, war, loss, occupation and the experience of her people, and she uses music and poetry as a form of cultural and political expression. Among her well-known songs is the Spanish-language “Tus ojos lloran” (“Your Eyes Weep”), which reflects her personal grief at the deaths of her father and two brothers. She performs and records for more than three decades and is associated with the representation of Sahrawi identity internationally.

Death

Hassan dies of bone cancer in the Sahrawi refugee camps of Tindouf province, Algeria, in 2015.