1. Mariem Hassan usually sang in Hassaniya, an Arabic variant spoken mostly in Western Sahara and Mauritania, occasionally singing in Saharan Spanish.
11 Facts About Mariem Hassan
1. 2.
Mariem Hassan was the third of ten siblings in a nomadic family.
3.
Mariem Hassan lived there until 2002, when for work and health reasons she moved to Spain, first to Barcelona and then to Sabadell, where she lived with her husband and sons.
4.
Mariem Hassan returned to Western Sahara some time prior to her death in 2015.
5.
In early 1976, Hassan joined the musical group Shahid El Hafed Buyema, which, following the death in combat of El-Ouali Mustapha Sayed, first president of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic, became Shahid El Uali.
6.
Mariem Hassan travelled with the band to many countries, playing at cultural events and headlining a number of world music festivals.
7.
In 1998, Shadid El Uali disbanded, and Mariem Hassan started her solo career with a pair of songs on the album Sahrauis: The Music of the Western Sahara, released by the Spanish label Nubenegra.
8.
Mariem Hassan began receiving treatment after returning to Spain, staying there on a permanent basis due to the disease.
9.
Mariem Hassan performed at the WOMEX 2005 in Newcastle upon Tyne, and in several editions and locations of WOMAD festival, as WOMAD Las Palmas de Gran Canaria 2008, WOMAD Caceres 2008, WOMAD Charlton Park 2009, WOMAD Sicily 2009, WOMADelaide 2010 and WOMAD New Zealand 2010.
10.
The main song "Shouka" is structured as a cantata, touching all the rhythms of the Sahrawi traditional music, in which Mariem Hassan gives a response paragraph by paragraph to the 1976 speech of Felipe Gonzalez at the Sahrawi refugee camps.
11.
Mariem Hassan died of bone cancer in the Sahrawi refugee camps of Tindouf province, Algeria on 22 August 2015.