Somalia is no exception to the rule that artistic genius is a scarce commodity anywhere. There is keen competition among talented poets, and a nation of poetry connoisseurs demands a high level of skill and persuasiveness from its practitioners.
Poets who win public favor are a privileged class, socially and politically. At the same time, though, they assume the burden and responsibility of preserving history and shaping current events. Historically, Somali bards have mobilized public opinion in support of war or peace, as they saw the need.
Sayyid Muhammad Abdille Hasan - who was immortalized in British history as the "Mad Mullah" - used his verse to unify Somalis in the fight against British colonialism.
And the Somali Dervish Movement, a religious-based resistance to foreign domination in the first two decades of this century, produced a body of work that pitted the Dervishes not only against the European powers who were carving up the country, but also against their Somali collaborators. Since the Somalis on both sides were skilled poetic gladiators, the verse of the period is filled with appeals to opponents to change sides and with pleas to neutrals to join the battle.
The colonial and post-colonial period saw a change in Somali poetic traditions. The 1940s gave birth to a romantic species of verse that avoided the hazards of political and social commentary. But politics continued to intrude, sometimes covertly. "The metaphoric and allusive language," says Andrzejewski, "was well suited to fooling the foreign censors who at that time were trying to check the activities of those Somalis who were working toward independence, and it sometimes happened that an apparently harmless love lyric was easily decoded by Somali listeners into an attack on the authorities."
During Mohamed Siad Barre, who ruled Somalia from 1970 to 1991, poetry helped mobilize the population for such social programs as national immunization and literacy campaigns, it also was employed to consolidate Siad Barre's power.