Banning Eyre presents songs and stories from Somalia’s fertile independence era, and up to the present. This podcast is a supplement to Afropop’s Hip Deep program “Reconstructiong Somalia, Love Songs at the Birth of a Nation.” Somali scholar and former broadcaster Ahmed Ismail Samatar introduces Somali oud virtuoso Hodeidi. Historian Lidwien Kapteijns continues her brilliant and amiable commentary on the love songs in which gender debates played out in the ’60s and ’70s, and brings the story right up to the present with fascinating reflections on the early career of the rapper/songwriter K’Naan.
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