Somali exiles use music to slam war

0 Comments | AFP, May, 2007

NAIROBI (AFP) — Upon entering a tiny recording studio in a grimy Nairobi building, Felis removes her face veil, slides headphones onto her ears and starts singing in a high voice: "Girls are raped. Warlords are to blame".

Over a soundtrack of world music and rap, Felis Abdi and the group Waayaha Cusub, made up of some 20 young Somali refugees, crudely slam the war that has torn up their country for 16 years, almost all their lives.

"All the people have been killed. Let us repair the country. There is no school, there is no peace," sings Waayaha Cusub, which means "New Era" in Somali.

"People listen to you more when you sing than when you speak," says Abdiwali Ibrahim Garyare, one of the group's singers, who has lived in Kenya for 17 years.

"We can...