The Centre Cannot Hold — Modernity in Somali Theatre
I am often struck about how much my sense of humour has changed in the past decade. My humour, it would seem, has been reduced to a series of Vine references without context or comment. “Welcome to my kitchen…we have…avaca…”, I say. Laughter ensues. I have to admit, this is very new. I didn’t always have such a good sense of humour. I used to find Sacha Baron Cohen funny when I was like 12. And before that, my sense of humour was shaped by my parents.
There was a moment in my childhood when I THOROUGHLY enjoyed Riwaayado (plays/performances) with my parents. It was like the thing to do on the weekend. IT wasn’t exhausting like watching a foreign film with them because we all know what that means: you’re on translation duty (euch!). My mate’s mum had the world of riwaayado, and if she was in a good mood, she would lend them out to us. We watched Hablayahow Hadmaad Guursan Doontaan a good 300 times. I still watch it occasionally. Thanks Youtube.
As I grew up though, I saw that a lot of these were in and around the idea of modernity. Most Somali comedies will have a central love story, a village idiot character, some form of social problem, and a beautiful couple of singers that’ll sing for us. The social problem at the heart of these plays is almost also the direct result of modernity. Maybe, change brought about through modernity. My impression is that the way plays are written are closely linked with the way traditional somali storytelling works. There’s always a take a way. Some mirro, wisdom if you like. Imagine a Somali Griot. So, given that stories were being written by poets who made their living writing other forms of stories, in poetry or oral performances, it would make sense that they would fall back on the thing they know: teaching lessons through their stories. But that’s not the bit I’m interested in. I’m interested in why all of these plays are about modernity.
Imagine for a second, the uncle that everyone in your family calls a “reer magaal”. This can be a euphaism for he’s a gaal, or he’s a well-dressed guy who ocassionally reads stuff. How that word is used to describe him depends entirely on how he conducts himself. If he’s not prayed a single rakaca in 25 years, well, you know. Reer magaalnimo has always been a fine balance between endless possibilities and damn-right abandonment of all our values and culture. Marshall Berman, some big marxist donny, described modernity in his All That Is Said Melts Into Air in the following way:
To be modern is to find ourselves in an environment that promises adventure, power, joy, growth, transformation of ourselves and the world and the same time, that threats to destroy everything we have, everything we know, everything we are.
And that’s just it. Your Reer Magaal uncle is both a threat to everything we hold dear and a source of hope.My feeling is that a large portion of Somali plays are about navigating this fine line well.
If you look at the above clip from the much celebrated play “Magaalo Joogu Xumo” by the famous poet Sugaal Cabdulle Cumar, you’ll note that the couple represent everything that is possible. They are cute. They’ve obviously got a loving relationship. Nothing weird to see here, right? That’s because they represent the collective taste and class. They are us. The humour in this scene comes not from a clever bit of wordplay, but from the sheer ridiculousness of our reer baadiyo friend. He doesn’t know how to behave. And we, the audience, both pity and ridicule him. The Reer Baadiyo trope is such a common trope in Somali humour today, that you can’t for the life of you chew at a local chew house without being subjected to 12 reer baadiyo jokes. It’s just our reality now.
Perhaps even when the jokes aren’t directly about them being reer baadiyo, we’re laughing at their mannerism, the way they say things, these provincial types. It’s odd that a play that was written during a moment in Somali history when the majority of Somalis were in fact “reer baadiyo” would mock the reer baadiyo in that way. Uncouth, uncultured and definitely lacking basic civility is the takeaway. The prewar era certainly pushed a modernisation narrative. I mean, it was a “scientific socialism” ffs. Plays since the war have been different though, I think, at least on the issue of modernity.
The key difference in postwar and pre-war modernity tales is that in the postwar period, things fall apart. The centre cannot hold because there is no centre. There’s no metropole. And so, modernity, this thing that was once heralded as the modus vivendi, is all of a sudden a thing that we need to wrestle with, ward off, to remain authentic and true. Qabyo is a first class example of this. What befalls Sangub’s character is actually a bit peak. But he’s also not a nice bloke. Qabyo and many plays in that same vein aren’t so much comedies as they are genuine conversations about what being in the west means for us. What lies in the man’s domain and what doesn’t any more. What is the role of a wife? Where does religion fit? Your sexist adeer doesn’t find the notion of black bags funny, he’s just laughing through the pain cos my g believes modernity has destroyed his culture..
“Heblaayo, rather than accept naag labaad, she decided to throw the whole husband away…she put his clothes in a bac madow…kkkkk…naag nool”.
