Love Songs in Motion

Voicing Intimacy in Somaliland

Christina J. Woolner

$163.95

Hardback

Not in-store but you can order this
How long will it take?

Availability Information

We source books from suppliers in Australia and overseas. For books we don't currently have in stock, the time it takes to get them from our suppliers can vary widely - from a few days to a few months - so we check each book with each supplier to determine the expected time it will take to be supplied to us.

We then advise you accordingly. If the time taken to get any book is too long for you, you can let us know and we will cancel or adjust your order, and refund as required.

To find out the anticipated arrival time for specific items prior to ordering, please contact us by phone or email:

Phone +61 2 9264 3111, or 1800 4 BOOKS (1800 4 26657) if outside Sydney:
option 1 Abbey's Bookshop (Crime, History, Science, Kids & more) • info@abbeys.com.au
option 2 Language Book Centre (ESL & Foreign Languages) • language@abbeys.com.au
option 3 Galaxy Bookshop (Sci-fi, Fantasy, Romance, Graphic Novels) • sf@galaxybooks.com.au

QTY:

English

University of Chicago Press
13 December 2023

Music; Theory of music & musicology; Social & cultural anthropology

Series: Chicago Studies in Ethnomusicology

An intimate account of everyday life in Somaliland, explored through an ever-evolving musical genre of love songs.

At first listen, both music and talk about love are conspicuously absent from Somaliland’s public soundscapes. The lingering effects of war, the contested place of music in Islam, and gendered norms of emotional expression limit opportunities for making music and sharing personal feelings. But while Christina J. Woolner was researching peacebuilding in Somaliland’s capital, Hargeysa, she continually heard snippets of songs. Almost all of these, she learned, were about love. In these songs, poets, musicians, and singers collaborate to give voice to personal love aspirations and often painful experiences of love-suffering. Once in circulation, the intimate and heartfelt voices in love songs provide rare and deeply therapeutic opportunities for dareen-wadaang (feeling sharing). In a region of political instability, they also work to powerfully unite listeners on the basis of shared vulnerability, transcending social and political boundaries and opening space for a different kind of politics.

Taking us from 1950s recordings preserved on dusty cassettes to new releases on YouTube, to live performances at Somaliland’s first postwar music venue where the author herself eventually performs, Woolner offers an account of love songs in motion that reveals the power of music to connect people and feelings across time and space, opening new possibilities for relating to oneself and others.

By: Christina J. Woolner
Imprint: University of Chicago Press
Country of Publication: United States
Edition: 1
Dimensions: Height: 229mm, Width: 152mm, Spine: 23mm
Weight: 481g
ISBN: 9780226827377
ISBN 10: 0226827372
Series: Chicago Studies in Ethnomusicology
Pages: 256
Publication Date: 13 December 2023
Audience: Professional and scholarly , Undergraduate
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Christina J. Woolner is a Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellow in the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of Cambridge.

Reviews for Love Songs in Motion: Voicing Intimacy in Somaliland

“This book is a joy to read: conceptually innovative, empirically rich, and beautifully written, it takes us into the lives and thoughts of the people who create and circulate love songs in Somaliland. Combining musical and textual insights of a high order, Love Songs in Motion gives us new ways of thinking about intimacy, publicness, and creative work ‘in motion.’ It is one of the best ethnographies ever written on an African popular culture genre, and it will be an instant classic.” * Karin Barber, emerita, University of Birmingham * “A beautiful and moving ethnographic account of the role and importance of hees jacayl, or love songs, in present-day Somaliland. Drawing on the author’s extensive and intimate experience in Somaliland, this finely crafted book presents a compelling alternative to ‘Afro-pessimist’ discourses in showing how the performance and circulation of hees jacayl is a hopeful, future-oriented act that fosters personal healing and postwar reconciliation and cultivates a sense of belonging in Somaliland.” * Amanda Weidman, Bryn Mawr College *