Dur-Dur Band

Mogadishu in the 1980s

Dur-Dur Band was a Somali funk, disco and soul band from Mogadishu; dur dur means spring in Somali. Wikipedia names Eise Dahir Qasim on keyboards, Abdillahi Ujeeri on bass and the singer Sahra Dawo among the founders, and Hyphen says Qasim and Ujeeri founded it at the Juba Hotel. The Analog Africa liner notes add that Ujeeri came from Somali Jazz, the drummer Handal from the Bakaka Band, and the brothers Abukar Dahir Qassin on lead guitar and Ahmed Dahir Qassin as sound engineer, a first for Somalia. Lead singers included Shimaali, Sahra Dawo and Baastow. At its peak the band had four lead singers, three backing singers and about ten instrumentalists, per Songlines.

The sound fused traditional Somali music, Banaadiri beats, Daantho and Saar, with funk, reggae, soul, disco and new wave; Bandcamp Daily cites Michael Jackson, the Jackson 5, Tina Charles and Bollywood as influences. A 1986 debut single "Yabaal" was a breakout hit, they were the house band at the Jubba Hotel and scored a play at Mogadishu's national theatre, and Volume 2 came out at their peak in April 1987. Volume 5 was made with the help of the government-run Radio Mogadishu, though the band was not state-affiliated. Music circulated on cassettes, and when civil war began in 1991 the band disbanded and members fled, to Ethiopia, Djibouti, the US and elsewhere. The tape-copying network kept the music alive.

Awesome Tapes From Africa reissued Volume 5 in March 2013, and Analog Africa released Dur-Dur of Somalia Volume 1, Volume 2 and Previously Unreleased Tracks on September 14, 2018. A revival band, Dur-Dur Band International, was founded in London by the manager Liban Noah and the original bassist Ujeeri, giving its first gig in 2011. Its Berlin concert of 2019, at the House of World Cultures, came out as The Berlin Session on March 3, 2023, and they played the Barbican in London on December 5, 2024. Founders Daljir and Dawo moved to Columbus, Ohio, and ran a music store. In September 2025 "Gorof (Elixir)" went viral on TikTok, per Wikipedia.