Various - Mogadisco (Dancing Mogadishu - Somalia 1972-1991) Vinyl 2LP

After being blown away by a few tunes—probably just as you will be after listening to this—Samy Ben Redjeb travelled to the infamous capital city of Somalia in November 2016, making Analog Africa the first music label to set foot in Mogadishu. Upon arrival, Samy began rifling through piles of cassettes and reel-to-reel tapes in the dusty archives of Radio Mogadishu, searching for music that “swam against the current.” His persistence paid off when an unmarked pile of discarded recordings was discovered in a cluttered corner of the building. Colonel Abshir, the senior archivist and protector of Radio Mogadishu’s collection, explained that the pile mostly contained unidentified music, which he described as “mainly instrumental and strange music.” At the words “strange music,” Samy was hooked, cancelling his return flight to Tunisia. What followed was a treasure trove of sounds: radio jingles, background music, interludes for programs, television shows, theatre plays, and disco tunes that had been stripped of lyrics, looped, and spliced into groovy instrumentals. Over three weeks of watermelon, grapefruit juice, and shisha-fuelled night-time sessions behind the fortified walls of the archive, Samy and the staff assembled Mogadisco: Dancing Mogadishu, 1974–1991.

The music captured the spirit of a golden era. In 1970s Somalia, both men and women sported huge afros, bell-bottom trousers, and platform shoes, grooving to the sounds of James Brown, Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, and The Temptations. The Iftin Band represented Somalia at the 1977 Festac festival in Lagos, returning with both an award and the influence of Afrobeat. Bob Marley’s reggae also swept through the country, blending seamlessly with the traditional Dhaanto beat. Soon, the disco wave arrived, Michael Jackson’s revolutionary sound transforming Somalia’s live music scene, with kids learning to moonwalk in the streets of Mogadishu. Luxury hotels like Al-Uruba, Jubba, and Al-Jazeera hosted live bands such as Iftin and Shareero, giving rise to a flourishing music culture. Yet Mogadisco was no easy project: tracking down exiled musicians, gathering anecdotes of kidnappings, onstage accidents, and band rivalries took three years. As Colonel Abshir Hashi Ali, chief archivist and former bomber-wrestler, stated, “I have dedicated my life to this place. I’m doing this so it can get to the next generation; so that the culture, the heritage, and the songs of Somalia don’t disappear.”