Hope for African mothers

African songstress Saba Anglana is set to entertain tonight at the Laico Regency Hotel during a fundraising gala dinner for the international Stand up for African Mothers Campaign, writes KIUNDU WAWERU Saba Anglana lives in Rome, Italy. But her roots, her soul and inspiration, are in Africa.

She was born in Mogadishu, the capital of the war-torn Somalia, to an Ethiopian mother, and an Italian father.

This cocktail of genes has inspired her third album, Life Changanisha (mixed life). Life Changanisha is a medley of different Kenyan musical backgrounds, researched and compiled by an unlikely duo, under the behest of an even more unlikely body, and theme.

Unlikely because Saba and her producer Fabio Barovero know no Kiswahili, and Amref, the body the album was made for is well known for Flying Doctors rather than music. The theme of the music is; "no woman should lose her life when giving life".

The album has influences from Kibwezi, Loitokitok, Malindi and Dagoretti and other areas where Amref, Africa Medical and Research Foundation, has projects. Saba visited Kenya last year for the first time and went around the country where she experienced first-hand the suffering of women. "But I saw hope, which hopefully can come from within," says the musician who has taken the best of her two worlds. She radiates the beauty of the Ethiopian woman tinged with the European features.

"Back in Europe, I get very angry when I tell people I was in Africa and they go, ‘Oh, poor Africans’". She pauses, "Africans are not poor. They just live simply."

While in Kenya, Saba experienced a kaleidoscope of cultures and the album captures this mix of social backgrounds, thus Life Changanisha.

She did a collabo with the Bismillahi Gargar, the group of Somali women musicians who live in Garissa. The song, Heskana, which incidentally translates to Our Song, according to Saba is the theme song of the Amref campaign, Stand up for African Mothers. It seeks to create awareness against maternal and infant mortality. Beautifully, Bismillahi and Gargar, who come from a community where women go through a lot of suffering, say that maternal deaths are unnecessary.

Saba has also done a song, From Within, with James, 17, a street boy from Dagoretti whose "hip-hop flows with beats from Kibwezi".

Saba says From Within started as a song under a tree in Dagoretti, in between glue-sniffing and unforgettable eyes. It tells of how a country is made up of an infinity of interconnections and how a network of solidarity ‘from within’ provides practical and emotional support to each individual.

Standing up for women

And with the album, she hopes that Africa, and indeed the world, will support its women, "the hope of Africa" and also the children who are the future.

She will be performing the songs for the first time today at the Laico Regency Hotel during a fundraising gala dinner for the international Stand up for African Mothers Campaign.

Amref recognises the power of art, and music to create awareness around humanitarian issues, and that’s why they brought Saba, a renowned musician on board the campaign.

Maternal health remains a thorn in the 21st century Africa, causing thousands of needless deaths every year. Amref says that one in 16 women risk dying during pregnancy or childbirth and 200,000 mothers die every year due to a lack of simple medical care leaving 1.5 million African children motherless each year. Also, 40 per cent of African women do not receive prenatal care, and more than half of all deliveries take place at home without medical assistance.

The campaign hopes to help reduce maternal mortality in Africa by 25 per cent, mainly by training 15,000 midwives by 2015.

For Saba, she believes that artists and musicians in particular, as music is universal and talks to everyone, can greatly influence policy makers and also the conscious of the people.

"Artistes can’t change things, politics can. An artiste can only raise conscious, which really is changing things indirectly," she intones philosophically.

And to her, the campaign against maternal deaths is not a far away thing that happens in Africa. Ten years ago, her aunt died, in Italy, during childbirth, and the personal experience has buoyed her to write songs that will communicate.

Concert

You can catch up with her tonight at the fundraising dinner at the Laico, or make your way tomorrow to the Alliance Francaise. Her stage performance, backed by her musicians Cheikh Fall and Tate Nsongan, is a treat.