“The blast happened as musicians were singing and spectators were clapping for them. Huge smoke made the whole scene go dark. People screamed and soldiers suddenly started opening fire at the gate. Some wounded people escaped and ran away,” Salah Jimale told The Guardian.   This was reported by British …

  On 19 March 2012, live music sounded in Mogashu, Somalia’s capital, when the country’s national theatre was reopened. The Somali National Theatre closed in the early 1990s when civil war broke out. Now, for an audience of around 1,000 people, the reopening of the theatre was marked with the …

 This 11-minute documentary was made as a report on Somalia for Freemuse’s annual Music Freedom Day, as well as for The Humanitarian Bazaar Music Project.Directed by Daniel J. Gerstle • Music Freedom Report no. 7: Somalia   The Humanitarian Bazaar presents the first draft cut of ‘Somalia | Music Too …

First the militant extremist group Al-Shabaab ordered Radio Afgoye, the only radio station in the lower Shabelle region, to refrain from broadcasting songs and music. When the radio station’s management refused to do this, the militias carried out an illegal takeover of the station. This was reported by The National …

On 9 December 2010 the press freedom advocacy organisation Reporters without Borders awarded the Somali radio station Radio Shabelle with the 2010 Media of the Year prize. Radio Shabelle defied the deadly addicts of Islamists of not to air songs and music by re-starting its broadcasting of songs and music …

The music died in Somalia when, on 14 April 2010, radio stations in the country’s capital Mogadishu were ordered to cease playing all music. In a nation under a government that has already banned wearing bras, musical ringtones and in some areas made growing a beard compulsory, this is the …

Somali Islamic extremists have banned music on the airwaves, but the organisers of Somalia’s newest radio station, Bar-Kulan, ignore their death threats and music ban, reported Globe and Mail. Because Bar-Kulan (Somali phrase for “meeting place”) refuses to obey the extremists, its 50 employees of must take precautions for their …

Somalia is starting to resemble Afghanistan under the Taliban, where hard-line Islamist militia bans music and movies and forbids the public from watching sports on tv, reported the Associated Press. Events in the past years in the failed state of Somalia indicate that Islamist groups like Al-Shabaab are doing their …

Somalia’s Minister of Information has backed up the radical Islamists’ music ban in Mogadishu and in this way countermanded a government order to radio stations to play music or face closure. This turnaround expose a difference of religious opinion in the government, writes Freemuse’s Somalia analyst Abdulkadir M. Wa’ays By …

Four private radio stations in Mogadishu have been accused of collusion with radical Islamists over music ban. By Abdulkadir M. Wa’ays At a press conference on Sunday 19 April 2010, the Secretary General for the government’s regional administration in the capital Mogadishu Abdikafi Hilowle Osman threatened to close down four …