Golden-era cultural icon Khadijo Mohamud Yusuf ‘Qalanjo’ passes away in Hargeisa

Qalanjo, the Star Who Gave Somalia Its Soundtrack, Dies in Hargeisa

She walked onto the stage with a dancer’s grace and a singer’s certainty, a silk scarf sweeping like a banner. In the 1970s and ’80s—when Somali theaters were full and radios hummed in every teashop—Khadijo Mohamud Yusuf, known to her country simply as Qalanjo, helped give Somalia its soundtrack. The Ministry of Information confirmed she died on August 29 in Hargeisa, calling her passing a profound loss to Somali culture. She was among the first women to command national stages in a fiercely male-dominated era, her songs and dances becoming the pulse of a nation in bloom.

A Pioneer From Borama to the Big Stage

Born in Borama, Qalanjo rose to fame with Waaberi, the state-backed troupe whose name—“Dawn”—fit the spirit of the moment. The group was a cultural institution: a rigorous school of music and movement, a traveling embassy, and a mirror held up to the public. Within that world, Qalanjo stood out. She modernized folk traditions, especially the lively dhaanto, by welding them to orchestration and crisp choreography. The movements were familiar to older audiences and thrillingly new to younger ones. Her voice, clear and commanding, could cut through a crowded hall and pull the back rows forward.

Her performances were spectacles of precision and joy. They were also subtle acts of defiance. Somalia’s arts and media were overwhelmingly led by men; Qalanjo’s rise announced that women belonged at the center of national cultural life, not just on its edges. That she did it without shedding the elegance of tradition only deepened her authority. Her presence alone expanded what was possible for Somali girls who had never seen themselves on those stages before.

Songs That Became Common Inheritance

Even if you don’t know her full catalog, you know its atmosphere: love entangled with longing, duty in duet with desire, the everyday drama of a nation constantly on the move. Songs like Caashaqa Sal iyo Baar, Deesha, Sharaf, and Soohor Caashaqa—a duet with the beloved Hasan Adan Samatar—are embedded in Somali memory. They play at weddings and in taxi vans and in diaspora living rooms where a parent, hearing the first notes, turns the volume up and smiles. Her track Diriyam found a second life beyond Somalia’s borders when Ethiopia’s Jano Band covered it in 2016, proof of how the region’s musical roots braid together across lines on a map.

Her repertoire traveled well because it carried familiar themes in precise, delightful language. It felt like a conversation among friends—across generations and continents. When Somali National Television launched in 1983, Qalanjo’s traditional songs were among the tracks broadcast to mark the occasion, a choice that effectively placed her at the center of the nation’s sonic identity. In Somalia’s golden age of stage and studio, she was both exemplar and emblem.

Women at the Forefront, Despite the Odds

Qalanjo’s ascent helped crack a ceiling that had contained the country’s female performers. She wasn’t alone: artists like Magool, Sahra Ahmed, and Maryam Mursal each carved their own path, but Qalanjo brought dance onto equal footing with song in a way that changed how the public read the female body onstage—no longer just as adornment, but as an instrument with its own narrative authority. She made room, and others walked through.

Her public image gathered legends over the years. Some insist she was the country’s first “Miss Somalia.” Historians say the documentation is thin. What’s undisputed is impact: her poise, costume, and choreography set a standard that many tried to meet. As the Ministry of Information put it in its tribute, she was “a pioneer whose artistry reflected the spirit and resilience of the Somali people.” In a region where cultural icons often double as archivists of national feeling, Qalanjo was a careful steward—classic, but never dusty.

The State, the Stage, and a Shared Sense of Self

Qalanjo’s career matured alongside a media infrastructure that carried art to the corners of the country. Like Egypt’s Umm Kulthum or Ethiopia’s great ensembles of the Imperial Bodyguard Band era, she benefited from a time when the state invested heavily in culture as a public good. Waaberi, the National Theatre, and radio orchestras were not merely entertainment; they were scaffolding for a shared language of belonging. Qalanjo’s name and face were part of that civic architecture, her voice as present as the evening news.

That scaffolding would later buckle under the strain of conflict, scattering artists and their audiences. But the music endured. Somalis carried it with them, pressed into cassettes and tucked among passports and family photographs. In Norwegian townships and Minnesota suburbs, on London buses and Toronto sidewalks, Qalanjo’s songs stitched together neighbors and half-remembered landscapes. Today, a digital revival has made her work newly accessible: YouTube channels and curated playlists rebroadcast the catalog for a generation that knows the melodies before they know the history behind them.

How a Star Outlasts Her Era

What does it mean when a country measures its stability by what it can sing together? To many Somalis, the news of Qalanjo’s death is not only the passing of an artist but an echo of a vanished era—one defined by a confident cultural engine and a shared repertoire. Yet her imprint lingers in the work of younger performers who sample vintage horns, revive dhaanto footwork, and lace new lyrics to old rhythms. In Nairobi studios and Hargeisa cafes, in diaspora community centers and on stages from Addis Ababa to Dubai, you can hear her influence in the way performers hold the beat and hold the room.

Tributes have poured in from fellow artists, politicians, and Somalis across the diaspora. Social feeds are crowded with grainy footage from black-and-white broadcasts and smartphone recordings of family gatherings where her songs lead to swaying lines of cousins and aunties. The grief is affectionate, the memories gentle. It’s the kind of farewell given to someone who earned not just applause, but trust.

The Last Bow

Qalanjo died in Hargeisa, the northern city whose market stalls still trade in old cassettes—evidence of a nation that keeps its history close at hand. She leaves behind a canon of songs and performances that bridged folk tradition and modern stagecraft. She leaves behind, too, a template for how to be a woman on a stage that wasn’t built for you: upright, witty, unflinching, and generous.

Somalia, and the broader Horn of Africa, has lost a singular presence. But the songs are still here. They will be, as long as there are weddings that need a first dance, as long as a taxi radio clicks on at dusk, as long as someone in a faraway city hears the opening bars of a melody and remembers the scent of the sea. The task now is as old as art itself: to pass it on, intact and alive, and to keep the doors she opened unlatched for those who will follow.

“A pioneer,” the Information Ministry called her. It is accurate. But it is also a beginning. Pioneers are remembered not only for what they did, but for what they made possible. In that sense, Qalanjo’s work continues, carried in the steps and voices of those she helped inspire.

By Ali Musa
Axadle Times international–Monitoring.