critical theories of place studies

Siti Binti Saad, Mselem House, and the voice of a new anticolonial taarab tradition

This presentation centers on how the legendary taarab singer Siti Binti Saad (c. 1880–1950) developed a philosophical craft of music-making for social justice. I argue herein that Saad’s work produced anti-positivist spaces. Her lyrics reconfigured power relations underpinned by dominant Eurocentric narratives. As a counterstory this presentation explores how Saad embedded in her work vivid phenomenological scenes and the rhetorical construct of counter argument. It gives special treatment to Saad’s public frustrations with wealthy Zanzibarian businessmen, colonial administrators, and landlords in her song ‘wala hapana hasara’. We will explore the reasons for which her lyrics held covert expressions towards the ruling classes. Saad’s lyrics moreover lent themselves to philosophical critiques of the semiotic spaces of patriarchal power. And with this understanding of her anticolonial ideas in context, of the people and places of early twentieth century Zanzibar, Tanzania, we might better appreciate them as a palpable contribution to knowledge beyond the western philosophical ‘canon’. To this end, this presentation unpacks the life experiences that Saad embedded within the song ‘wala hapana hasara’, to demonstrate how they shape and reflect collective memory and critical appreciation of place. Through her anticolonial songcraft, I argue, Saad was amongst various womanist philosophers who set the groundwork for decolonial feminism. In other words, Saad’s wala hapana hasara courageously challenged the colonial/ modern gender system, or the oppressive structures of Eurocentric global capitalism that for five-hundred years destroyed communities, their cosmologies, and the planet. *** Recordings of the song ‘wala hapana hasara' and the musical score that accompanied the lyrics have seemingly been lost to posterity. This video concludes with a reconstructed, modernized version of ‘wala hapana hasara’. Based on musical compositions arranged and recorded by Mariam Hamdani, Ali Al Ibrahim, Mohammed Othman, Sharia Isa, Bola Origunwa, & Matthew Wilson, PhD FRHistS, this version of wala hapana hasara is an AI-assisted reconstruction of what the song may have sounded like. Recorded in Stone Town Tanzania, Jul 6 2025 Mastered Oct 7 2025 by intonarrative. https://www.intonarrative.com/ [https://www.intonarrative.com/] *** Siti Binti Saad (c. 1880–1950) is part of a larger digital humanities project and graduate elective https://www.critical-theories-of-place-studies.org/ [https://www.critical-theories-of-place-studies.org/] edited by Matthew Wilson, PhD FRHistS https://drmatthewrwilson.com/ [https://drmatthewrwilson.com/]