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Christina J. Woolner - "Love Songs in Motion"
Featured Book
Love Songs in Motion: Voicing Intimacy in Somaliland
An intimate account of everyday life in Somaliland, explored through an ever-evolving musical genre of love songs. At first listen, both music and talk about love are conspicuously absent from Somaliland's public soundscapes. The lingering effects of war, the contested place of music in Islam, and gendered norms of emotional expression limit opportunities for making music and sharing personal feelings. But while Christina J. Woolner was researching peacebuilding in Somaliland's capital, Hargeysa, she kept hearing snippets of songs. Almost all of these, she learned, were about love. In these songs, poets, musicians, and singers collaborate to give voice to personal love aspirations and often painful experiences of love-suffering. Once in circulation, the intimate and heartfelt voices of love songs provide rare and deeply therapeutic opportunities for dareen-wadaag (feeling-sharing). In a region of political instability, these songs also work to powerfully unite listeners on the basis of shared vulnerability, transcending social and political divisions and opening space for a different kind of politics. Taking us from 1950s recordings preserved on dusty cassettes to new releases on YouTube and live performances at Somaliland's first postwar music venue--where the author herself eventually takes the stage--Woolner offers an account of love songs in motion that reveals the capacity of music to connect people and feelings across time and space, creating new possibilities for relating to oneself and others.
This book will be available for purchase at the event.
About This Event
Christina J. Woolner will discuss her new book Love Songs in Motion: Voicing Intimacy in Somaliland. A Q&A and signing will follow the discussion.
At the Co-op
Featured Author
Christina J. Woolner
Christina J. Woolner is a Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellow in the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of Cambridge.
About the Venue
Seminary Co-Op Bookstore
For over 60 years, the Seminary Co-op Bookstores has served as a cultural anchor in and beyond Chicago; as the first not-for-profit bookstore whose mission is bookselling, their stores, which include 57th Street Books, celebrate the power of the browsing experience to inspire curiosity, discovery, and delight.
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