The Day The Music Died: Islamists Ban Music on Somali Radio Stations — Replace Music with Sound of Gun Fire

The Islamic extremists controlling much of Somali have banned music and jingles from radio stations as an offense to Islam. The replacement for jingles? Recordings of gunfire.

Previously, films, football, and shaved chins were declared as UnIslamic.

The so-called Somali government only controls the capital, Mogadishu.

Abdulahi Yasin Jama, the head of Tusmo Radio says “We are using other sounds such as gunfire, the noise of the vehicles and birds to link up our programmes and news.”

It appears that God much prefers the calming sound of automatic weapons to music.

For the full story, click here

15 thoughts on “The Day The Music Died: Islamists Ban Music on Somali Radio Stations — Replace Music with Sound of Gun Fire”

  1. Raff,

    I’m guessing JT chose “American Pie” because it is a great song and remember the lyrics: “…but something touched me deep inside the day the music died!”

    This story made me think of The Flaming Lips “Yeah, Yeah Song”

    If you could blow up the world
    With the flick of a switch
    would you do it?

    If you could make everyone poor
    Just so you could be rich
    would you do it?

    If you could watch everybody work
    while you just lay on your back
    would you do it?

    If you could take all the love
    without giving any back
    would you do it?

    And so we cannot know ourselves
    or what we’d really do?

    With all your power
    with all your power
    with all your power
    what would you do?

    If you could make your own money
    and then give it to everybody
    would you do it?

    If you knew all the answers
    and could give to the masses
    would you do it?

    Are you crazy
    it’s a very dangerous thing to do
    exactly what you want
    because you cannot know yourself
    or what you’d really do

    With all your power…

    What would you do…

  2. Somalia is one crazy place. I don’t quite understand why American Pie was added to this article, but I do love that song! One of the classics for an old guy like me!

  3. “The joke among music theory geeks is “If a tree doesn’t fall, and there’s an audience there to hear it is it a John Cage piece?””

    Ha! That’s pretty funny. 😀

    I’m not much on the avant-garde.

    A few years ago we visited MOMA, and I was bored to tears. I did like one or two installations, but it turned out that one of them was in fact being cleaned out by the janitor, who left his broom, mop, pail and dust heap in a rather harmonious arrangement.

    The other was a pile of rocks. 😀

  4. Ginger,

    The joke among music theory geeks is “If a tree doesn’t fall, and there’s an audience there to hear it is it a John Cage piece?”

  5. “The question is, what happens when you play the best of John Cage?”

    A tree falls in the forest?

  6. The question is, what happens when you play the best of John Cage?

    [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gN2zcLBr_VM&hl=en_US&fs=1&]

  7. I’d rather listen to gunfire than hear that kid sing “You Light Up My Life” again.

    LOL!

  8. I’d rather listen to gunfire than hear that kid sing “You Light Up My Life” again.

  9. “Sometimes it is incredible how similar fundamentalism is when doing a comparative religion study.”

    It sounds more like wartime propaganda. Controlling the radio is the first step in controlling the minds of those whose freedom they have usurped.

    It has nothing to do with Islamist anything.
    It is not a religeous move it is a military one, hiding under the clerics cloak.

  10. Having been born after WWII, I always have trouble understanding how Germany, the country that produced so many religious and secular philosophers, artists, and musicians could be the same country to produce Nazism.

    But as I read articles like this one and others about present day fundamentalists in all religions, all cultures, and all countries, I begin to understand.

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