Songs of Exile
Songs of Exile: Singing the Past Into the Future is a book of Oromo women and girls’ songs and their English translation. It is produced in the context of youth violence to reduce youth alienation and create community healing. Songs of Exile is offered to younger generation with the goal of curbing youth violence by connecting youth to their cultural resources.
Five genres of songs are featured in Songs of Exile. The first genre is prayer songs; the second is birth songs; the third is lullabies; the fourth is love songs; and the fifth is nuptial songs. Together, they give a flavor of how our foremothers related to their creator, to all creation, to each other and to others.
Safuu
Songs of Exile is a companion to the audio CD titled Safuu (2011). In Oromo cosmology, safuu is a symbolic expression of the intimate interrelationships and delicate checks and balances among everyone and everything in the cosmos. In this CD, the central role of women and girls in such delicate intimacy and balance of safuu is expressed through their songs in everyday life. On this CD, the first song, Asaabalee, is women’s prayer song. The next two songs, Shururuu, are lullabies. The next five songs, Hillaancoo, Kuulleen Dhalee, Gurraaleewoo, Ateetee, and Killoo Bunaa are women’s birth songs of celebration and prayer. The last four songs are Seenaa and Mararoo, girls farewell nuptial songs. Click on each one and enjoy.
Women of Yabus
Women of Yabus presents Oromo refugee women performing the ancient ateetee ritual songs of their foremothers. These Indigenous women were forcefully evicted from their ancestral land by the violent villagization program of the then communist military government of Ethiopia. These women held tight on to the rituals of their foremothers to heal from political violence. They performed these ritual songs in 1986 in their displaced refugee camps in Yabus in the borderlands between Ethiopia and Sudan. Thanks to Ayyaanaa Leencaa who recorded them and shared it with us.