Oromo artists refuse to be silenced

On October 8, YouTube terminated Raya Studio, one of the most popular Oromo music production houses and an archival channel with hundreds of videos, from its platform. The Google-owned video sharing service alleged that Raya Studio, which boasts close to 200,000 subscribers, violated its community standards.

Raya Studio is a private recording and distribution house in Ethiopia, which serves as a platform for Oromo revolutionary and protest songs. In the absence of production houses in general and within the context where critical voices are silenced by those in power, Raya Studio symbolizes a determination among the Oromo to confront hegemonic discourses of knowledge production. That is why the page’s abrupt closure sent shock waves through Oromo communities around the world. The removal of hundreds of songs from the YouTube archive is tantamount to burning a library and silencing critical voices.

A few days later, on October 10, Ethiopia security forces detained and released Abraham Raya, the owner of Raya studio. His detention and Raya Studio’s closure follow weeks of relentless online “cancel” campaign targeting Oromo singers, activists, and government critics. The closure of Raya Studio channel and the campaign against Oromo artists underscores the power of music in the Oromo struggle and the relentless effort to silence Oromo critical voices.

Bridging divides

Music is a medium through which people express their emotions, stories, gains, losses, pains, achievements, agonies, glories, aspirations, challenges, and resilience – individually as well as collectively. It serves as a communication channel whereby people transcend time and space connecting historical, geographical, and religious divides. Music also plays a paramount role in bridging inter-generational gaps – children are connected to adults; the living connected to the deceased; the past is connected to the present and future.

Music reconstructs historical, political, and social relations. According to Gĩchingiri Ndĩgĩrĩgĩ, African artists used music to unmask the colonial history of exploitation, oppression, and dehumanization, and thereby, as a tool of de-legitimizing colonial rule and its legacies in the postcolonial era. In this context, music reminds people of their past, connects it to the present, and enables them to critically articulate the construction of meaning, historical narratives, and discourses. Through music, individuals and group members come to know themselves, their commonalities, their oppression, their history, their pride, their achievements and aspirations leading to what Benedict Anderson describes as the formation of “imagined communities.”

The Oromo, as an oral society, has always used different forms of folklore including proverbs, heroic recitative poems (geerarsa), and songs to express their grievances and quest for freedom and equality. Throughout the Oromo struggle against successive regimes in Ethiopia, Oromo artists have played a key role in articulating Oromo identity, artistically revealing a history of domination, marginalization, dispossession, and exploitation.

Oromo musicians articulated the bloody and dehumanizing process of Ethiopian state formation that subjugated the Oromo from the late 19th century. Through their poetically eloquent and culturally embedded songs, artists have revitalized Oromo wisdom, culture, history, struggle, and aspirations of the people for equality, development, democracy, and the search for and claim of entitlement to “home” and “homeland” – abbaa Biyyummaa.

In the 1970s and 80s, while some – such as the legend Ali Birra – expressed the Oromo people’s longing for historical and cultural revival through music, many others focused on resistance songs echoing the Ethiopian conquest of Oromo land (Oromia), the people’s right to self-determination and the aspirations and resolve for freedom and equality.

Ka’i Qeerroo

During the most recent Oromo protests (2014-2018), young Oromo musicians produced a series of resistance songs that inspired the Qeerroo and Qarree (the Oromo youth) to mount the protest. For example, Hawi Tezera’s Ka’i Qeerro (Rise up Qeerroo) and Seenaa Solomon’s Akkamiin Diina gombisu (How can one topple the enemy) were remarkable in two regards.

First, the courage and bravery of these young women in bringing the Oromo voices to the center stage through their artistic work signaled the inclusivity of the struggle in transcending inter-generational and gender divides. Second, both of them performed their songs through geerarsaa, which was traditionally the domain of men, and by doing so, these artists figuratively motivated their women counterparts in the struggle.

Likewise, Haacaaluu Hundeessa’s Maalan jira (What existence is mine) and Jirra (We are still alive), Galana Garomsa’s Sodaa qawwee hin qabnu (We don’t have the fear of a gun) and Ittiqa Tafari’s Saaqi Saanqaa (Open the (prison) gates) were among the many powerful resistance songs that energized Oromo protesters. Despite differences in approaches and styles, these songs unequivocally asserted Oromo’s determination to regain its rights over its ancestral land. There were thousands of lyrically and graphically defiant music singles by the time the protest movement ended. Most of these videos were either produced or disseminated by Raya Studio.

Haacaaluu, an Oromo resistance singer, songwriter, and activist, embodied Oromo knowledge production and resistance through his culturally rooted and poetically eloquent songs. His songs served as a soundtrack and a kind of anthem for Oromo protesters from 2014-2018. Among dozens of Oromo resistance singers, Haacaaluu is a leading icon who revolutionized modern Oromo music through his powerful oratory.

Haacaaluu’s work transcends the time, space, and context he lived in. His imagination of liberty, freedom, and equality was not bounded by his lived experiences of the repressive system with its military and security powers, which many would perceive difficult to topple. In contrast, Haacaaluu saw the resilience of his people, their determination and thirst for self-emancipation, and the fact that the power of resistance inevitably overwhelms the power of domination.

Haacaaluu’s deftness in eloquently venting suppressed voices through culturally and socially embedded and politically meaningful musical works has not only unmasked mysteries of freedom and liberty but also deconstructed hegemonic discourses of nation-building in the country.

The Oromo protest that converged across the political spectrum prepared the ground for Abiy Ahmed to assume the premiership in April 2018. Nevertheless, his leadership failed to live up to its promises to the Qeerroo. The demands of Oromo protesters for political reforms, freedom of expression, Oromo’s right on Finfinne, and equal access to economic opportunities remain unanswered. Conversely, critical Oromo voices including political party leaders, activists, artists, and intellectuals are being targeted with arrests and intimidation.

The silencing of Oromo voices

Since Haacaaluu’s shocking assassination on June 29, Oromo artists are once again facing jail and systemic censorship from the Ethiopian state. His gruesome murder, thus, represents a strategy of destroying the Oromo body of knowledge and it signals the continuation of silencing dissent. Likewise, the erasure of Raya Studio’s archive, which amounts to the oral history of the Oromo protests movement, is part of the systemic silencing of critical voices, bodies of knowledge, and oral tradition that the people use to resist oppressive systems.

YouTube has not publicly commented on the case. An anti-Oromo group of regime supporters, who reported Raya Studio to YouTube, gleefully celebrated the closure. An online petition calling for the reinstatement of the page has garnered more than 11,000 signatures at the time of writing.

The resurgence of defiant voices

Nevertheless, in post-Haacaaluu Ethiopia, rather than being silenced and suppressed by the trauma, several young and upcoming artists have released bold revolutionary songs that express the collective rage of the Oromo. To mention a few, Caalaa Dagafa (Ati Eenyu? – Who are you?), Fayisa Hayilu (Fira Kijibaa – The false relative), Ittiqa Tafari (Galma Dhugaa – A true destiny), Jafar Yusuf (Ofi Qopheessi – Get Prepared) and Keekiyya Badhadha (Barraaq – Be graceful/shine) produced audacious revolutionary songs blasting the derailing of the political transition for which the Oromo sacrificed so much. The return of Oromo protest music illuminates the continuity of the struggle and the fundamental role music plays in Oromo’s collective consciousness and self-expression.

In conclusion, by resurfacing historical oppression and connecting that with present experiences of the society, music has continued to be a powerful catalyst in creating, reconstituting, and reconstructing a sense of collective identity among the Oromo. For the Oromo, resistance songs are mirrors through which the people retrospectively see their past agonies but also prospectively imagine their future. That is why authoritarian regimes, past, and present, attempt to silence Oromo voices by intimidating, jailing, and persecuting artists.

The resurgence of revolutionary songs and determination of young Oromo artists in unveiling the derailment of the political transition by Abiy Ahmed and his administration has placed the regime’s legitimacy in question. It also signifies that the Oromo resistance is against exploitative, oppressive, and hegemonic systems rather than against individuals or groups assuming power. It is past time for Abiy and his enablers to turn up the volume and hear the music.