One man's mission to unearth Africa's lost treasure trove of music - Red Sea Foundation (Hargeysa)

[Hemaal]

When he was growing up, Vik Sohonie moved around a lot with his family. Born in India, he was raised in various places in southeast Asia and the United States, and spent extended periods in Europe and Africa. To stay anchored wherever he ended up, he recalls, he listened to music. “I always saw music not only as what people listen to and enjoy, but as a gateway to other cultures,” he said.

After getting a master’s degree in journalism and working for international media outlets including Reuters, Sohonie wanted a project that combined his passion for storytelling and music. He was especially interested in African music, much of which is overlooked globally.

And so was born the idea of Ostinato Records, a New York-based label that documents music from the African continent and diaspora. Sohonie has his work cut out for him, as he specifically goes in search of lost or rare music.

Ostinato isn’t alone in this pursuit: Over the last decade, independent labels run by ethno-musicologists have sprung up across the world, unearthing a treasure trove of African music. From Analog Africa to Sublime Frequencies, Sahel Sounds, and Awesome Tapes from Africa, all these projects aim to explore and curate the continent’s diverse musical offerings, and hopefully rescue them—and the musicians who made them—from obscurity.

Last week, Sohonie was a speaker at the 2017 TEDx Mogadishu, where he talked about his company’s efforts to digitize a third of the 10,000-tape archive stored at the Red Sea Foundation in Somaliland—considered the largest Somali cassette tape archive of its kind anywhere in the world.

https://qz.com/970117/one-mans-mission-to-unearth-africas-lost-treasure-trove-of-music/


Hargeysa is truly the home of Somali arts & culture (Hoyga fanka iyo sugaanta)

 

[Hemaal]

The man behind the Red Sea Foundation and Hargeysa Cultural Center