As an ethnomusicologist, whose current research focuses on community engagement through music with Somali diaspora communities in the United States, Rehanna Kheshgi has studied music from around the world.
On Saturday, Kheshgi brings Somali music to the St. Olaf College campus for the first time as part of her course titled Somali Community Engagement through Music. Kheshgi, an assistant professor of music in her sixth year at St. Olaf, said the upcoming concert was an appropriate conclusion to the semester-long class.
On Saturday, May 11 in Urness Recital Hall at St. Olaf’s Christiansen Hall of Music, her students will perform “An Evening of Somali Songs” alongside Minnesota-born Harbi Mohamed Kayiye. They will share and discuss Somali songs from the 1960s to 1980s.
The concert begins at 7 p.m. and is free and open to the public.
“The music is very folky and rhythmic,” she said in an interview last week in her music department office. “There are chanting words with clapping and stomping and often a call and response. It’s music that is designed to be accessible.”
After years of research and community engagement, Kheshgi and her students are helping bring Somali songs to life for a new generation by launching a website and hosting two concerts. On April 27, the same concert was performed to a packed house at the Paradise Center for the Arts in Faribault.
Thanks to a grant from the Southeastern Minnesota Arts Council, Kheshgi has also led creation of a website that features Somali songs recorded by well-known artists and research on the tradition behind the music.
In February, the St. Olaf College Faculty Life Committee presented her with the 2024 Social Justice Award.
“My approach with this project is to use music as a way to make authentic connections with people and make a difference,” Kheshgi said. The next step was integrating those partnerships into the curriculum.
Masters of ceremony for the concert include Kahiye, the sole professional Somali drummer in North America, Sayidcali Ahmed, the artistic director and Kheshgi. Ahmed, who is a collaborator on the project and teaches at Surad Academy in Faribault, where the St. Olaf class has held Somali song workshops, is also one of the program managers at Waano Learning Center.
Kahiye, Kheshgi, and her students will perform seven songs at the concert, and the history and background of those pieces will be featured on the Somali Songs website.
Community collaboration
She began working to establish the foundations of a new course by connecting with organizations such as the Somali Museum of Minnesota, teachers at Faribault High School who work closely with Somali students, and Waano, a Somali-owned after-school tutoring program in Faribault.
During the spring of 2021, Kheshgi conducted a pilot dance workshop series with Somali students at Faribault High School. Somali Museum Dance Troupe director Mohamoud Mohamed led the workshops.
The semester-long Somali Music and Dance course was first offered in the spring of 2022. Students spent the first half of the semester learning about Somali culture — with an emphasis on music and dance — and how this culture has been transformed by members of the Somali diaspora to adapt to their new home in Minnesota. The class had the opportunity to participate in off-campus workshops and discussions with local Somali artists and organizations.
According to St. Olaf communications, Kheshgi began researching Somali music and culture when she was hired in 2018 and worked transform the St. Olaf Music Department’s popular World Music course into a locally grounded learning experience. Kheshgi reached out to performers and organizations in the Twin Cities whose musical traditions were underrepresented in the curriculum.
“I wanted to bring that experience of global music closer to students’ daily experiences in Minnesota,” Kheshgi said.
In the fall of 2022 Kheshgi worked with student Gudon Ahmed to explore the question “How can Minnesota-based educational institutions better support Somali students?” Gudon incorporated her own experiences as a student in the Faribault Public Schools system into the research project.
When Kheshgi’s course returned in the spring of 2023, students in the course began holding listening sessions with local Somali community members to determine which songs to include on the website and in performances.
“It was only after we found out how much the songs are loved by our local Somali community members that we decided which songs to perform at the concerts this spring,” Kheshgi said.
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