Somaliland: Forget Somalia’s Captain Phillips, Blackhawk Down and Enjoy Sweet As Broken Dates

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Sweet As Broken Dates Lost Somali Tapes from the Horn of Africa

Somalilandsun- Whitewashed coral houses, cafes and restaurants with Moorish arches graced the streets of Mogadishu in the yesteryears of the 1970s when Men sported afros and flared trousers, while women dressed in their colourful baatis (a classic cotton dress) and diracs (loose-fitting dress) with their heads uncovered.
This aura of modernization and peace dispersed with winds and in its stead is the chaos of war and human suffering that have transcended in almost three decades, thence Over the last few decades, Somalia has become a symbol of poverty and anarchy.
But while recent Hollywood blockbusters Captain Philips and Black Hawk Down have depicted civil war and modern piracy in Somalia, people who lived in the capital, Mogadishu, in the early 1970s will tell you a very different story.
The discovery of thousands of lost recordings from Somalia’s golden era of music is a timely reminder of the country’s remarkable hybrid sounds, writes BBC Somali’s Yasmin Ahmed in a piece titled Somalia’s lost tapes revive musical memories