Mariem Hassan

Mariem Hassan 2008

Mariem Hassan ( Arabic مريم حسن; * May 31, 1958 near Smara , West Sahara ; † August 22, 2015 near Tindūf , Algeria ) was a Sahrawi singer and poet from the Western Sahara. She sang in Hassania , an Arabic dialect of Western Sahara and Mauritania , and sometimes in Spanish. The Spanish language goes back to the former status of Western Sahara as a Spanish colony.

life and work

Mariem Hassan sang in her songs about the fate of the Sahrawi people in exile. They deal with the longing for a lost homeland as well as the difficulties of living in exile. Musically, in addition to the traditional forms, echoes of blues and jazz can be heard. Mariem Hassan had to flee from the Moroccan troops to Algeria at the age of 17 and lived with her family at times in a refugee camp. There she began her singing career initially with the group El Hafed , which later renamed itself to El Uali and toured Europe under this name. Her solo career only began after the turn of the millennium. With the support of the label owner Manuel Dominguez from Madrid, Mariem Hassan recorded the album Deseos in 2002 , which was only released in 2005. Mariem Hassan was considered to be "one of the most prominent representatives of the Western Sahara music scene". Mariem Hassan can be seen in several documentaries about her country and people.

Web links

• Mariem Hassan in the Internet Movie Database (English)
• Web presence

Individual evidence

1. ↑ World music from the Western Sahara - Mariem Hassan as a guest. General Anzeiger Bonn, accessed February 24, 2016 . 
2. ↑ Mariem Hassan. (No longer available online.) Summerstage, 2007, archived from the original on February 24, 2016 ; accessed on February 24, 2016 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.