Afar Ways

Music is not something the rural Afar people “do for show,” Momina asserted. Since most have no television, it is done for their own amusement at night. Every night. As Yanna Momina and Brennan recorded, the tide came in and they ended-up surrounded by water. Throughout the album, the thatch hut audibly creaks and rocks in the waves. Born in 1948, Yanna was discovered while accompanied on a two-string shingle played with nails and a matchbox for maracas. She made a name in the region not just for her thrilling vibrato, but for being the rare Afar woman who writes her own songs. Brennan states, “Yanna has one of the most unique voices I’ve ever heard. She flirts with the edge of chaos without losing control of her idiosyncratic phrasing.”