Saba Anglana, Ethiopian-Italian actress & singer

November 1, 2009 -She was raised in Italy by her Italian father and Ethiopian mother. But the actress and musician Saba Anglana, who records under the name Saba, sings in Somali.

Saba was born in Mogadishu, capital of Somalia, to an Ethiopian mother (born in Somalia) and Italian father during the years of General Muhammad Siyad Barre’s corrupt and repressive regime. The perennially suspicious attitude towards Italians ,and the conflict with Ethiopia over the Ogaden region, forced her family to leave the country when she was just 5 years old. Saba recalls, ‘We were a mixed-marriage family: inconvenient, perhaps a threat. I still remember nights at Bolimog (Cape Guardafui, near Alula — the extreme east point of Africa, where my father was working) when policemen came to interrogate my father, as they thought he was a US spy. In reality, he was there because he loved Africa, and my sister and I were born there.’

Saba’s father originally went to Africa to forget the extreme suffering he experienced during World War II, when he was a colonel of the Italian Forces. As a prisoner during the colonial battles in Ethiopia, Saba’s grandfather had been deported to Mogadishu, and it was there that her mother was born.. When Saba’s parents married, their close friends and family considered their union as a symbol of reconciliation and peace — finally forgetting the past conflict of Ethiopia, Somalia and Italy.

At the height of the crisis for Saba and her family, the Somali government gave them forty-eight hours to leave the country, forcing them to migrate to Italy. Since that time, a deep homesickness has always been present. ‘I wanted to learn as much of the Somali language from my mother as possible, particularly the dialect of Xamar Weyne — the quarter were she was born with my uncles and aunts.’

After doing much of her growing up in Italy, Saba studied to become a mosaicist, completing a degree in Art History at the University of Rome La Sapienza, and also became known throughout Italy for her acting roles in some well—known television programmes (La Squadra in particular, in which she played a half-Italian, half-Somali policewoman). However, music was by far her greatest and most constant passion. She recalls, ‘at the age of 8, in Addis Ababa — where we went sometimes to visit my grandmother — I remember my sister and I performing songs and dances to entertain the neighbours’. Growing up, music became her main expression and African music allowed her to mend the broken thread with her homeland.

Her Album – Jidka (The Line)

On Jidka (The Line), her musical debut, she explores the divide between Somalia and Italy with a rare sensitivity and gentle humour; mixing acoustic guitars and koras with traditional African beats and contemporary percussion. The result reflects both one woman’s search for her identity and what it means to be alive in the 21 st century, when so many people live in more than one culture.

Jidka is Saba’s way of telling her story. The word ‘Jidka’, which is the title track, means line – the line that runs on her belly and divides it into two parts – a darker side and a lighter one. This for her represents the union of diversities and the harmony that her parents found when they fell in love. Her story focuses on her identity as multilayered and with many different influences. She sings in her mother tongue – a type of Somali that is spoken in Reer Xamar, a quarter of Mogadishu, and has real expression and rhythm in itself. The result is an album which is a real mix of contemporary and traditional.

Many of the songs on the album describe the struggles of life in Somalia. ‘I Sogni’ is the story of a woman who leaves her village for the big city in search of a better life; ‘Melissa’, sung partly in English, is about the plight of many women who escaped the civil war and crossed the desert in search of freedom. ‘Je Suis Petite’ is dedicated to Africa – a continent full of suffering (’The world is cruel, and I am so little’). Other songs are more romantic, describing love and the importance of living in the moment (’Manta’). ‘Hanfarkaan’ describes how the wind is linked to the spirit – when it blows strongly it brings us into contact with the spirit of someone we have lost.

Saba is joined on djembe, guitar and percussion by long-term friend and collaborator, Taté Nsongan, from Cameroon, on kora Senegalese Lao Kouyate and on vocals Felix Moungara. The album is produced by well-known musician/composer Fabio Barovero, founder of Mau Mau and the Banda Ionica project. As Saba says, ‘we worked to realise a sound which combines past and present, tradition and modernity, with our minds open to a future of increasing cultural mixes.’