Women Then, Women Now.

Oumou Sangaré and the Wassoulou music genre of Mali is one of the most magical sounds I’ve heard. I am never entirely sure what people mean when they say women then were more “tolerant” (of the intolerable of course), than women today.

Which women? Dad’s mom who told me herself that in the 50s when the man she married violated the agreed upon covenant, she exited & later married a man who built her Nyanza home with his bare hands. Which women? Mom in the 80s who changed entire Universities following a sex-for- grade type situation, Butare edition? Which women? Oumou of Mali who sang in the 90s of the emancipation of the African woman. Take “Moussolu” for example, it called for women “to work and make their nation proud”, (as opposed to just sit in marriage as was the custom.)

The only difference between women then and women now is the eye roll had not yet been invented…