Poetry, song and stories
Balwo: the short love song that began modern Somali music
Balwo is a short Somali love song form that began in the 1940s with Abdi Deeqsi 'Sinimo', a lorry driver from the Borama area. Accounts agree that it started when his lorry broke down in the bush near Zeila and he sang 'Balwooy, hooy balwooy' ('misfortune'), but differ on the year (1943 to 1945) and the place. Balwo spread fast in spite of opposition from religious leaders and led directly to the heello songs of the 1950s.
What balwo is
Balwo is a style of short sung poetry from the Somali territories and Djibouti, usually about love and longing (Balwo, Wikipedia). The word means "misfortune". Its creator was Abdi Deeqsi Warfaa, known as Abdi Sinimo ("cinema"), a nickname he earned as a lively storyteller (Wikipedia). Wikipedia names his lineage as the Reer Nuur of the Gadabuursi.
Abdi Sinimo
Abdi Deeqsi was born at Jarahorato near Borama. Unlike most Somali poets of his time, his family lived in town rather than as nomads. As a young man he trained as a vehicle mechanic in Djibouti, then French Somaliland. Back in Borama around 1941 he drove and repaired lorries for a merchant, Haji Hirsi, on routes between Zeila, Djibouti, Borama, Hargeisa and Dire Dawa (Wikipedia).
The first balwo: where and when
All accounts tell of a lorry breaking down, but they differ on the details.
- Wikipedia, drawing on several books, says it happened some time between 1943 and 1945. Oral tradition names three places: Habaas, Ban Balcad, or Selel on the Geryaad plain, about thirty miles south of Zeila. Unable to fix the lorry, he sang, as the poet Hasan Sheekh Muumin tells it: "Belwooy, belwooy, hooy belwooy… Waha i baleeyay mooyaane" ("I do not know what caused me this suffering") (Wikipedia).
- The writer Bashir Goth places it in 1943 near Jidhi, with Sinimo beating an empty kerosene tin as a drum (Bashir Goth, "Somali music through the ages", Music In Africa).
- Another version of the first lines adds "Waha i balweeyay baabuure", "what caused me this suffering was a lorry" (Wikipedia).
When the lorry was towed back and Sinimo reached Borama, he recited the song in public. It was an instant success, and other poets began composing in the new form (Wikipedia). Bashir Goth dates the first Balwo Band, formed in Borama, to 1944 (Music In Africa).
Opposition
As balwo grew, wealthier families in northern towns held listening parties. Members of religious orders spoke against it. Wikipedia names Shaykh Abdullah Mijirtain and Muhammad Hassan among religious figures who composed poems against balwo, holding that sung love poetry offended Muslim morals (Wikipedia). Sinimo went on to form a troupe that performed in many towns.
From balwo to heello
Balwo was the direct forerunner of the heello, the longer song form of the 1950s, which Wikipedia treats as a sub-genre of balwo (Wikipedia). Abdullahi Qarshe, who first brought the oud (kaban) into Somali song, credited Sinimo: "modern music was in the air at the time of Abdi Sinimo, who is widely regarded as the genius who formulated and organized it into the belwo" (Wikipedia, citing an interview with Qarshe). The scholar John William Johnson traced this path in Heelloy: Modern Poetry and Songs of the Somali (Internet Archive).
Read more
Sources
- Balwo, Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org
- Bashir Goth, "Somali music through the ages", Music In Africa · musicinafrica.net
- Internet Archive · archive.org
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