In this section, we showcase a different artist each month to represent either an ‘inside’ Saharawi voice or vision or else the ‘outside’ expression of an artist who has somehow found his or herself inspired and compelled to engage creatively with the Western Sahara and its people.

Featured Artist in January 2011:

Mariem Hassan, Singer

Our Featured Artist of the Month January 2011 is acclaimed Saharawi singer, Mariem Hassan.  In celebration of Mariem’s award-winning new album, Shouka (2010) and her life-long dedication to the Saharawi cause through her art, we open the New Year with a focus on Saharawi music.   Music will be in the spotlight for Sandblast over this and the next few years, as we bring to fruition our exciting and ambitious Studio-Live Project , to build the foundations of a professional music making industry in the refugee camps.  Artists, such as Mariem, are an excellent example of the power of music to get the Saharawis on the global stage and spread the crucial message of their struggle.  It was not until after Mariem had moved from the refugee camps to Spain in 2002, however, that she was able to release a solo album and have her powerful voice heard by international audiences.  We hope that Studio-Live will empower many more talented young Saharawi in the refugee camps to make their music themselves and showcase it on global platforms worldwide and be able to do this from the camps!

About the artist

Mariem Hassan is a daughter of the Saharawi diaspora.  She was born in 1958, near the city of Smara, in Western Sahara.  When Morocco occupied her homeland, she fled, at the age of 17, to the refugee camps in the harsh Algerian hammada desert.  Mariem lived in the refugee camps for nearly 30 years.  She was married and separated from a husband who tried to keep her from singing, and her five children were all born in the camps. In 2002, Mariem left the camps for work and health reasons and eventually moved to Sabadell, near Barcelona, with her youngest children, where she lives today.

Ever the fighter, during the war with Morocco, Mariem left her disapproving husband, to join the musical group, ‘Shahid el-Ouali’ (El-Wali the Martyr), after the Polisario founder and icon of the same name.  The group travelled with their songs of resistance and political activism, performing with the help of local solidarity committees; but plans for the release of an album recorded in Holland (1980) were frustrated and never materialised.  In 1998, Shahid el-Ouali disbanded and Mariem’s solo career began, with the release of A pesar de las heridas on the Spanish label, Nube Negra.  She collaborated with Leyoad and guitarist, Nayam Ali, for a subsequent, successful, European tour and album.  It was with the release of solo album Deseos (2005) that Mariem’s international career and worldwide acclaim really kicked off.  Critics hailed Deseos as a collection of “raw and wonderful songs” that spoke of “despair and hope, love and beauty in the face of hardship” (cdRoots.com).

Epitomizing Mariem’s fighting spirit, few watching the powerful performance she gave at WOMAX 2006, would have realised that she had recently been diagnosed with – and overcome – breast cancer; and that guitarist and arranger for the album, Baba Salamaa, had succumbed to leukemia just before its release.   Now widely considered to be the representative voice of the Saharawi people and their cause, Mariem’s latest release, Shouka (2010), has received even greater acclaim.

About Shouka

Fifty journalists from twenty European radio stations recently voted Shouka the fourth best world music album of the season.  Songlines Magazine considered it ‘Top of the World’, one of its Editor’s Choice 10 best new releases for Autumn 2010, crediting Mariem’s voice with “lacerating starkness, molten intensity and gripping power”.  With the humility and staunch resilience so typical of her people, Mariem responded to the critical acclaim granted her album: “I sing about life, our traditions, but I also sing about resistance. I am happy that Shouka lets the world know that there is a people who lives in the desert and hasn’t forgotten how to sing.”

Press coverage: article translated from the Spanish online news source Publico.

Album reviews: click here for Songlines review of Shouka and here for Roots World.

Click here for a trailer for ‘Mariem Hassan, The Voice of the Sahara’ (55min documentary premiered at FiSahara 2008)