Mariem Hassan
| Mariem Hassan | |
|---|---|
Mariem Hassan in 2008.
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| Background information | |
| Also known as | Voice of the Sahara |
| Born |
31 May 1958 Ued Tazua, Spanish Sahara |
| Died | 22 August 2015 (aged 57) Sahrawi refugee camps, Tindouf province, Algeria |
| Genres | Blues music, folk music, roots music |
| Occupation(s) | Musician, songwriter |
| Instruments | Vocalist |
| Years active | 1976–2015 |
| Labels | Nubenegra |
| Associated acts | Shahid El Uali, Leyoad, Nayim Alal |
| Website | mariemhassan |
Mariem Hassan (Arabic: مريم حسن; 31 May 1958 – 22 August 2015) was a Sahrawi singer and lyricist from Western Sahara. She usually sang in Hassaniyya, an Arabic dialect spoken mostly in Western Sahara and Mauritania, and occasionally in Spanish. Her use of the Spanish language was related to the former status of Western Sahara as a Spanish colony.
Mariem Hassan was born 31 May 1958 in the Ued Tazua, 20 km. away from Smara, Spanish Sahara. She was the third of ten siblings in a nomadic family. Music and poetry was important in the family and various relatives were singers, poets or dancers. In 1975, following the Green March and the Madrid Accords which ceded the territory to Morocco and Mauritania, she went with her family, first to Meharrize and finally to the Sahrawi refugee camps in Tindouf, Algeria, where she worked as nurse. Three of her brothers were killed during the Western Sahara War.
She lived there until 2002, when for work and health reasons she moved to Spain, first to Barcelona and then to Sabadell, where she lived with her husband and sons. She returned to Western Sahara some time prior to her death in 2015.
In early 1976, Hassan joined the musical group Shahid El Hafed Buyema, which, following the death in combat of El-Ouali Mustapha Sayed, first president of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic, became Shahid El Uali. She travelled with the band to many countries, playing at cultural events and headlining a number of world music festivals.
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