At first, there may seem to be little that’s feminist about Carioca funk, the electronic dance music of Rio de Janeiro’s poor favelas. Most MCs are men, and when women rap, their lyrics tend to echo that sexually explicit and sometimes violent style: sex, drugs and guns. Hardly empowering, right?
The Oromo are the largest ethno-national group in Ethiopia, accounting for over 40 million people or more than one-third of the population. However, they have been politically oppressed, economically exploited and culturally marginalised under successive Ethiopian regimes. Since the 1960s, the Oromo have sought self-determination through various forms of resistance, such as armed struggle under the banner of the Oromo Liberation Front.
Music has played a key role in the Oromo resistance movement. As is the case in many other societies – especially those where open political debate is risky – music serves as an instrument of defiance, allowing artists and their fans to stand up against dominant socio-economic, cultural and political forces. From legendary musicians to amateur singers, Oromo artists have used protest songs as part of their struggle for freedom, justice and equality.
Hachalu Hundessa (also written in the Oromo language as Haacaaluu Hundeessaa) was one of those musicians. Through his poetically eloquent protest songs, the young singer-songwriter came to represent the Oromo struggle. Then, in June 2020, he was murdered. Three men were convicted for the crime a year later, but no motive was given. Many believe it was a political assassination.
Hundreds of thousands of young people across Oromia, Ethiopia’s largest regional state, took to the streets in protest, demanding justice for Hachalu. Members of Oromia’s large diaspora also staged protests in US and European cities. The Ethiopian government used the protests and ensuing violence (reports at the time suggested that more than 80 people were killed) to justify its crackdown on Oromo opposition political parties.
As a political geographer, I focus on the struggles of the dispossessed and their covert and overt forms of resistance – one of which is protest songs. After his death, I studied three of Hachalu’s works: Maalan Jira! (Do I even exist!), Jirra! (We are still there/alive!) and Jirtuu? (Are you there?). My interest goes beyond mere scholarly analysis; there is emotional attachment there, too. I was part of the Qubee Generation, the youth cohort that spearheaded the 2014-2018 Oromo protest movement to which Hachalu’s songs added inspirational impetus.
In the resulting paper, I show how Oromo protest music like Hachalu’s reveals a history and geography of violence through land dispossession and political persecution. It is also more than just a record of events in time and space: protest music forges collective identity and spurs political movements. I also strive to comprehend what a musician like Hachalu Hundessa represents – and what it means to destroy a body that embodies the power of resistance.
Three key songs
Hachalu Hundessa was born in Ambo Town, some 120 kilometres to the west of the capital city, Addis Ababa, in 1984. He was active in Oromo student movements when he was at secondary school and was imprisoned by the government when he was just 17 years old, spending five years behind bars because of his activism. While in prison he worked on his first album, Sanyii Mootii. It was released in 2009 and immediately made him popular.
Members of Minnesota’s Oromo community protesting in the wake of Hachalu Hundessa’s murder in 2020. Brandon Bell/Getty Images
The first song I analysed was Maalan Jira! (Do I even exist!), the title track from his 2015 album. He tells of the occupation of Finfinne (what is today Addis Ababa) in the 1880s that dispossessed the Tulama Oromo clans, displaced them from their ancestral homes and sacred places and dismantled their social institutions.
He takes the listener or viewer through a mental map of history. The lyrics can be viewed as a struggle to dismantle institutions and discourses of settler-colonial systems long imposed by the Ethiopian state upon the Oromo. The murder of Hachalu, then, can be interpreted as an attempt at silencing counter-histories in Ethiopia.
Malaan Jira, the title track from Hachalu’s 2015 album.
The second song in my paper, Jirra! (We are still alive!), was released in October 2017, when the Oromo protest movement was at its peak. He underscores the determination of the Oromo, locating the resistance in physical places. He does this by naming places where the movement had a strong presence, articulating the convergence of different corners of Oromia towards the goal: liberation.
The third song, Jirtuu? (Are you there?) again exposes the historical events related to land dispossession and political oppression. At a live performance in December 2017, during a fundraiser in Bole for Oromos displaced by clashes with the neighbouring Somali region that year, he asked the crowd: “Where are you?”, then encouraged them: “Say we are in Bole!” The crowd cheerfully echoed his statement.
A live performance of Jirra!
This was not just a singalong. Bole is a district of Addis Ababa, home to wealthy people who settled on land expropriated from Oromo farmers. The performance was a declaration of the Oromos’ right to self-determination and a call that they should one day control the Imperial Palace – the offices and residence of the Ethiopian prime minister.
The lyrics include:
Kaafadhu farda keetiin loli, Arat Kiiloof situu aane (Fight with your horse, you deserve Arat Kilo – the national palace); Kaafadhu Eeboo keetiin loli, Arat Kiiloof situu aane (Fight with your spear, you deserve Arat Kilo)
Why this matters
My analysis reveals the power of Hachalu’s protest songs in unsettling dominant narratives and institutions, and in serving as a strong instrument of the Oromos’ political and social movements.
His music intertwines time, space and identity. It renders the reconstruction of the past and imaginations of the future amid contemporary uncertainties. In doing so, music serves as an archival library of the past, a platform of the present, and a mirror of the future.
The sound of Saharan rebellion attracts a global audience
Photo by Rowan Glass. It was taken at the Taragalte Festival in M’hamid El Ghizlane, Morocco between October 27–29, 2023. Used with permission.
This article was written by Rowan Glass and originally published by Global Voices on January 24th 2023 and republished here under the media partnership by Shouts and Global Voices.
In late October 2023, several thousand people gathered in the dunes outside the small oasis town of M’Hamid El Ghizlane in the Moroccan Sahara. Many were locals from M’Hamid and other towns in the region. However, hundreds of others flocked to the desert from all over the world to attend the 12th edition of the Taragalte Festival, one of the world’s largest annual desert blues festivals.
Harmonizing Tuareg rebellion and desert blues
Desert blues is a music genre pioneered by Tuareg musicians of the Sahara, emerging in the 1980s. The Tuareg are an Amazigh ethnic group inhabiting the Sahara, from the dunes of North Africa to the savannahs of West Africa and the Sahel. For millennia, Tuareg nomads roamed freely across the Sahara as pastoral nomads and traders, walking the same seasonal migration routes long trodden by their ancestors.
After decolonization inaugurated a new era of state-building in North and West Africa, the Tuareg found themselves divided across national lines for the first time in their history, split between the new countries of Niger, Mali, Burkina Faso, Libya, Algeria, and Nigeria, with smaller minorities in other adjacent countries. Thousands of Tuareg people were suddenly rendered stateless and marginalized in their ancestral homeland.
Under these conditions, some Tuareg clans turned to rebellion to express their grievances. Since the early twentieth century, there have been no fewer than five major Tuareg revolts and rebellions across the Sahara. Today, Tuareg insurgents continue to play major roles in the ongoing Mali War and Libya Crisis.
The Tuareg are the ancestral inhabitants of the Sahara, which is often one of the main subjects of their songs. Photo by Rowan Glass.
While some took up arms, others picked up guitars and used music to channel their experience of marginalization and exile in postcolonial Africa. The genre they created — a mix of traditional Saharan sounds and hard-driving electric guitar riffs — is known in the Tuareg language as tishoumaren, meaning “the unemployed,” a nod to the hard lives of Tuareg soldiers and musicians alike. Their lyrics, mostly sung in Tamasheq — a dialect of the Tuareg language most widely spoken in Mali — center around the Tuareg experience of exile, rootlessness, and the struggle to hold on to their identity.
International recognition
For several decades, desert blues was a regional genre little known outside of the Sahara and Sahel. Only in the last 20 years has the genre emerged from the desert and established a musical niche in the wider world. The turnout at the 2023 Taragalte Festival in Morocco testifies to the powerful appeal of this unique and rebellious music far beyond its Saharan roots.
For the first few decades of the genre’s development, the songs of the Tuareg rebellion and homesickness were recorded and shared via cassette tapes and flip phones. Only later, when the genre broke onto the international stage, did the pioneers of desert blues gain access to such luxuries as recording studios and record labels.
Desert blues first began to take the world by storm in the early 2000s, when the Malian band Tinariwen (meaning “deserts” in Tamasheq) started performing to progressively larger audiences in Europe and North America. Another important figure in the early history of the genre was Ali Farka Touré, a non-Tuareg Malian musician whose sound nonetheless influenced later musicians in the genre.
Since the days of those early pioneers, numerous new acts have emerged from other North and West African countries that are home to Tuareg minorities, including Niger, Libya, Algeria, and Morocco. Some of the most influential artists include the Nigerien singers Mdou Moctar and Bombino, as well as the Algerian group Imarhan.
The annual Taragalte Festival held in M’hamid El Ghizlane, Morocco, is today one of the largest desert blues festivals in the world. In addition to its music, the festival is also the site of cultural events, drawing hundreds from across Morocco, neighboring African nations, and beyond. Photo by Rowan Glass.
The popularity of these young artists, and others still emerging, demonstrates the enduring appeal of the sounds and messages of desert blues, both within the Sahara and beyond.
The appeal of desert blues among certain musical circles in Europe and North America may be attributed to its unique sound, blending Western rock with Sahelian rhythms. The lyrical content — seldom translated from Tamasheq — is of secondary importance to most global listeners, who are instead drawn to a perception of musical authenticity in this simultaneously modern and traditional fusion genre.
Sociopolitical relevance
For the Tuareg, however, the origins of desert blues in the experience of exile, rebellion, and marginalization continue to prove meaningful in the context of constant tension and upheaval in the Sahel. Conflict continues to define Tuareg life in countries like Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso, where sectarian strife and extremist insurgencies are endemic problems.
Among the thousands of attendees at the Taragalte Festival were hundreds of non-African visitors, mostly from Europe. The Festival au Désert in Mali, formerly the largest annual desert blues festival, also attracted many international visitors, but it was suspended in 2012 with the outbreak of the Mali War, which continues to this day. Photo by Rowan Glass.
For Tuareg communities caught in the middle of these conflicts, the themes and lyrics of desert blues remain as timely as ever.
Still, some desert blues musicians find a reason for optimism and choose to emphasize that their music is not all about the tragic aspects of Tuareg history. Desert blues is not only about the Tuareg experience of exile and nostalgia for lost freedom; it’s also about their love for the desert, the value of preserving their culture and identity, and their hopes for peace.
Despite the uncertain prospects for Tuareg communities in the Sahara and Sahel, the musicians of desert blues also sing of their love for the desert, the value of preserving their culture and identity, and the hope of peace. Photo by Rowan Glass.
The prospects of peace and stability in the Tuareg territories of the Sahara and Sahel remain uncertain. For the moment, the situation of endemic violence shows few signs of abating, and despite decades of repeated rebellion, the Tuareg have come no closer to achieving lasting autonomy in any of the African nation-states they inhabit.
However, one thing remains certain among the so-called “blue men of the Sahara”: the hard-driving sound of Tuareg rebellion will continue to resonate through the desert and far beyond.
