Thinking Through Voice with a Somali (Love Doctor) Poet

During research on love songs and political poetry in Somaliland, one of my closest interlocutors has been a poet named Weedhsame who describes his work as arising from a duty to ‘give voice to the voiceless’. Collaborating with a musician and singer to ‘give voice’ to otherwise mute love-sufferers, Weedhsame is revered as a ‘love doctor’ whose words provide therapeutic relief to his ‘patients’. His political maanso poems also powerfully ‘give voice’—sonically and textually—to the otherwise inaudible concerns of marginalised communities. My conversations with Weedhsame have provided me with a compelling emic perspective on what it means to ‘give voice’ to others, and the intimately social work of vocal mediation. They have also challenged me to think about my own anthropological voicing practices. In this reflection, I use my conversations with Weedhsame to consider the politics and practices of ‘giving voice’ in Somaliland, in matters of love and politics, before turning these lessons back on my own practice. I focus especially on what these practices might mean for how anthropologists gather, assemble and sound the stories and ‘voices’ of others in our work.