Studio-Live: Empowering Saharawi voices through music

Setting up a music project in the Saharawi refugee camps in south-west Algeria may not seem to some an obvious priority for a population that relies largely on humanitarian aid for its survival. Yet that is precisely what London-based arts and human rights charity Sandblast has been hard at work doing since early 2010.

The project, known as Studio-Live (http://www.sandblast-arts.org/our-projects/studio-live/), aims to empower the Saharawis to reach global platforms through music to express their culture and their struggle for self-determination. The idea is to equip the refugees with the resources, training, and knowledge to be able to build their own professional music-making scene in the camps that can gain international recognition and be a creative hub. The project involves working closely on the ground with Saharawi cultural authorities, artists and mass organizations for women and youth. In the UK, Sandblast has been linking up with organizations such as Fairtunes (http://www.fairtunes.org), music industry professionals, artists, music teachers and technicians to implement it.

Studio-Live is responding to local demands and initiatives to enhance the musical skills of the refugees, but to a real degree the project has evolved organically out of Sandblast’s mission to raise awareness through the arts. The seeds were sown when founding director Danielle Smith organized the first Saharawi arts and cultural festival in London in 2007 (http://www.sandblast-arts.org/our-projects/sandblastfestival/). The multi-arts event brought over more than 20 artists from the refugee camps and took three years to prepare, involving endless fundraising and many trials and tribulations to obtain the documents and visas for the refugees to travel to the UK. In the end, the experience proved unprecedented in its success to engage a mostly uninformed British audience with the Saharawi story.

It was the music, however, that showed the greatest potential to get the Saharawi on the map culturally. Tiris (http://www.sandblast-arts.org/tiris/), the music band that had come over, and Sandtracks ( http://www.sandblast-arts.org/media-coverage/press/azizas-songlines/) their debut album – which Sandblast also produced – got huge critical acclaim and galvanized the media’s attention. Tiris looked set to pave the way for the Saharawis much in the same way as the Tinariwen had done for the Tuareg. But the road to prepare Tiris for their UK tour and produce their album had required investing in considerable resources and training. The process revealed the widespread obstacles musicians faced in the camps to flourish and reach global stages. In a sense you could say that Studio-Live had already been born even before the idea formally took shape. The festival experience had triggered the realization that Sandblast could not really succeed in its mission unless steps were taken to strengthen the artistic voices of the Saharawis.

Despite the significant number of musicians living in Spain and elsewhere, Studio-Live is primarily concentrating its efforts in the refugee camps, where there is an abundance of talent but where opportunities and resources for it to develop and flourish are at their scarcest. The emigration of many of the most accomplished musicians over the years has left a vacuum. The newer generations of musicians are bereft of mentors and good sources to learn from about their own music traditions. Equally significant, however, the camps are symbolically important as the temporary home of the self-proclaimed Saharawi government-in-exile. The Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic represents the collective aspirations of the Saharawi people for statehood and ironically, in the current state of the conflict, the camps offer the only space where the Saharawis have a real measure of freedom to express themselves and their culture. Added to this, with 38 years of existence now, the camps, sadly, have acquired an air of semi-permanence and with that the development of the basic infrastructure needed to make setting up Studio-Live feasible.

Today, the urgency for a project like Studio-Live goes beyond enhancing musical skills. The effects of four decades of conflict in Western Sahara have had a real impact on eroding the culture of the Saharawi. This is particularly alarming, as gaining recognition for their unique nomadic, cross-roads desert culture lies at the heart of their struggle. The Moroccan occupying regime in Western Sahara has been denying the existence of the Saharawi as a separate people for decades. It has sought to repress the expression of their culture in different ways and in doing so has violated their fundamental human rights. In recent times, Morocco has even gone as far as to try to appropriate Saharawi culture as its own. This latest assault aims to strip the Saharawi of their own identity and history and to complete the process of their dispossession, having already appropriated most of their territory and its natural resources.

The truth is that the Saharawi voices are simply not being heard. Some people suggest this has to do with their non-violent approach to resistance and the fact that they have rejected all forms of terrorism to draw attention to their situation. In this regard, Studio-Live is reinforcing this peaceful tradition. It is also honing into and hoping to revive the central role music has historically played, in the Saharawi freedom struggle, to mobilize, build a sense of nationhood and tell the world what is happening to them. (See separate article to learn more). This role peaked during the sixteen-year war period. But then it declined from the mid-nineties on after the Saharawi liberation movement, the Polisario Front, agreed to a cease-fire with Morocco, in 1991, and diverted its energy to the implementation of the UN Settlement Plan. Holding the promise of a self-determination referendum for the Saharawi, it has yet to take place.

Without a doubt Studio-Live is ambitious and faces many challenges and ethical issues it must tackle. But Sandblast believes that the project has the potential to succeed if it manages to fully engage the Saharawi musicians and becomes a vehicle for building strong support links around the world and with the UK. Studio-Live is counting on being able to tap into the UK’s well-known love for the musics of Africa and to draw on its enormous pool of skills, expertise and knowledge of the music industry, to ensure the Saharawi voices and their peacefully-conveyed resistance message can no longer be ignored.

If anyone is interested in supporting Studio-Live with their skills, time, ideas or would like to donate (http://www.justgiving.com/sandblast/donate/?utm_source=website&utm_mediu...) please contact us at [email protected]

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* Danielle Smith is Sandblast Founding Director. [email protected]