Somali singing... an art that describes human life, thoughts and hopes

 The history of Somali singing began as a vocal art associated with work songs. These songs varied, according to the roles that man plays in his daily life, from the work of watering the flocks performed by men, to the grinding of grain and the work of counting for women, with a great influence of the Sufi schools, and their poems in praise of the Prophet, his family, companions and guardians. These songs are also associated with the seasons of fertility and drought, desertion and travel, plowing and harvesting, describing human life on Somali land, and his beliefs, thoughts, feelings, hopes and fears, in a form that has hardly changed for centuries.

However, the literary status of singing emerged, stemming from Somali poetry, to be a new poetic art in its own right, added to a series of literary arts that branched off from each other, after each of them took its final form, and found creators who specialize in it and are loyal to it, so that the abundance of production led to transform it into a literary art of its own.

The location of the song in Somali literature.

Literature in the Somali language is called "Sugan" and includes both prose and verse. The prose is divided into story, wisdom, sermon and blink, and modern arts, such as articles and theater, joined it after the Western presence in the country, starting in the nineteenth century. As for the systems, they are divided according to seniority into the “jpi” systems, the “tanto” and “girard” systems, the “branbar” systems for women, the “sherb” systems, the “guru” systems, and the “helo” systems from which the “has” systems, i.e. poems, emerged The singer.

The sung poems were distinguished by their easy language and short syllables, and researchers point out that despite the modernity of the art as a literary art in its own right, it is a continuation of the use of the old word in the Somali language “hes” or “hista”, which is directly related to the ancient Egyptian terms “hist”. And the Arabic “Hazzej”, as an extension of work chants, camel shoes and livestock watering.