ARABIC MAKEUP PICTURES

Sisters Siham and Iman Hashi during their recent visit to UNHCR's headquarters in Geneva. They form the group "Sweet Rush".
UNHCR / S. Hopper / October 2010

Q&A: Sisters in a "Sweet Rush" to make music and help Somalis

GENEVA, November 2 (UNHCR) – Born in Mogadishu, Siham and Iman Hashi are the first female Somali artists to sign a record deal with a major American label. After the civil war broke out in Somalia in the 1990s, the girls and their family moved to Canada as refugees. They are currently in Los Angeles recording their first album as "Sweet Rush" with Universal Motown, while finding time to raise awareness about the continuing suffering in their homeland. The sisters discussed their lives and work recently with UNHCR Web Editor Leo Dobbs in Geneva, where they performed at the Nansen Refugee Award ceremony. Excerpts from the interview:

Tell us about your departure from Somalia

Siham: We were born in Somalia but we don't have many memories of it. Our mother was a Somali diplomat and we moved to Saudi Arabia. We stayed there for a year or two and then moved to Germany. When the civil war broke out [in 1991] we were resettled in Canada. When we came to Toronto [with their parents, two sisters and a brother], we had to learn English. We noticed that [in Toronto] we weren't really getting the things that we asked for anymore. Our parents tried their best. They sheltered us a lot and they never made us feel like we had nothing, even though we had to start all over again.

Toronto's a pretty cosmopolitan city. Did you ever face problems there?

Iman: We realised we were different when we were in middle school. I think before middle school, we just thought, "Okay, we're kids." Many people said things that went over our heads. But at middle school I realised, kids were going to ask, "Like, where are you from?" "I'm from Somalia." "You're from Somalia? That's where all the starving people are and the kids with the big stomachs and the orphans." I was like, "What! No. Somalia is beautiful, it's just going through stuff."

It was so hard. Kids are mean in middle school. That's when I realised that people thought, "Oh, so you're a refugee." And I was like, "How do you know that I'm not a refugee?" And then I heard my Mum say that we are. That's when I realised that we were different.

Where did the music come from?

Imam: We grew up in a very traditional and religious [Muslim] home. My Dad was very strict and he was worried about education and never encouraged music. But my Mum was more lenient and would let us play Whitney Houston and other popular music when we were younger, and we would sing. And she would say, "You girls can sing." The interesting thing is that my parents can sing too, but nobody really encouraged it in the house. So it was just us singing together all the time and at school and with our friends. We never took singing lessons. Training was all school based, like vocal class and the school play.

How did you make the next step?

Imam: We moved to Atlanta. It was a very difficult thing getting to Atlanta because our parents would say, "No, we want you to go to college and become doctors. That's why we brought you to this country. This is your opportunity to do great things." We were like, "We love school, school's always going to be there, but can we just pursue our passion." It was like a battle, back and forth.

But finally my Dad said okay and we moved to Atlanta because my Dad's sister lived there and he said, "I trust her, so you guys live with her." That's the only reason we were allowed to go there. We were just meeting people and recording in studios. It was really difficult. But then when we landed the record deal, it was like: "Oh, my gosh." Back home, my parents got a lot of [strife]. People aren't very happy about their decision to let us go because in the Somali culture and religion it's taboo.

So everybody was mad at my parents. The Somali community is very tightknit. Our parents didn't care and said, "We trust our daughters and this is what they want to do and we have to respect that." So we got the record deal and . . . people back home thought, "They're actually doing this." Now we're starting to work with these amazing producers and a lot of great things are happening.

Do you sing about refugees?

Imam: Yes, we have the song that we performed at the Nansen Awards, "Shelter." It does not talk specifically about shelter and refugees. But it was meant to be vague, so that anybody listening to it can feel like it's talking to them. Listen to the song – it can be talking about refugees.

And then, "Take me Home," of course. We wanted to write a song about Somalia, but we didn't want to leave anybody out. So anybody from any co

Midtown Manhattan, New York City, New York, United States

The High School of the Performing Arts, formerly Public School 67, is a handsome Romanesque Revival style building originally built to serve a large residential community on the west side of Manhattan, The school is the first known to have been designed by C.B.J. Snyder, Superintendent of School Buildings to the Board of Education for thirty years. Snyder's tenure coincided with a period o': enormous population growth in New York, and he designed a multitude of new schools, many of which are major architectural monuments in their neighborhoods.

As the area around Times Square changed from residential to commercial, P.S. 67 fell into disuse. After World War II, however, it was revived and adapted for use by the new High School of the Performing Arts, an innovative high school which combined the usual academic curriculum with professional training in dance, theater, and music. Unique in the country at the time of its founding, the school became tremendously successful, and its graduates include many of the most famous performing artists in the country.

New York Public Schools and C.B.J. Snyder

From the beginning of massive immigration to the city in the 1880s until the em of the 1930s, New York experienced a population growth that eventually made it a metropolis of close to eight million people. That growth was matched by an unparalleled construction boom and during those decades much of the present city was built.

Many of the city's new residents were children, and meeting their educational needs with new school buildings was a major task undertaken by the city government during the last decades of the 19th century and the first decades of the 20th century. According to a 1905 architectural periodical:

The magnitude of the undertaking and the reality of the need for these new school-houses is shown by the fact that, even after several years of active building, there are at this time seventy-seven school-houses in various stages of completeness now in charge of the architect to the Department of Education, while contracts for twenty-four more will shortly be made.

The Board of Education built all the new schools to the designs of the Superintendent of School Buildings. At first, the Board was responsible only for Manhattan and those parts of the Bronx which constituted the 19th century city; after the

consolidation of the five boroughs into the City of Greater New York in 1898, however, its authority was extended over the entire area. From 1884 to 1891, Superintendent George W. Debevoise designed handsome school buildings, many, such as Public School 11 in the Bronx (a designated New York City Landmark), in the then popular Romanesque Revival style. His output, however, was later overshadowed by the thirty years' worth of schools designed by his successor, C.B.J. Snyder.

The writer of 1905 quoted above wrote of Snyder:

Possibly it was not the best, probably it was not the most economical, certainly it was not the most expeditious way to have all the school-houses the city stood in such sore need of designed and built by the official architect to the Department ofEducation. But since that method had to be followed, it is a matter of wonderful good fortune that the official architect chanced to be such a man as is Mr. C.B.J. Snyder, who not only at the outset showed distinct capacity for his task, but has proved himself a man able to grow as his opportunities opened before him.

Mr. Wheelwright in Boston, Mr. Ittner in St. Louis, Mr. Mundie in Chicago...have done excellent service to their respective cities in the way of building school-houses...but they have not had to do their work under the same sort of pressure that has been put upon Mr. Snyder, and they have not had to adopt their architectural treatment to as closely restricted sites.

For Snyder, the basic problem in the design of New York public schools was the accommodation of the requirements of students and teachers to small sites which were necessitated by the high cost of land acquisition.

He was particularly concerned with making his schools as healthy as possible for the students, and focused much attention on the development of fire protection, ventilation, unilateral lighting, and reduced classroom size. Among his contributions to school planning was the H-plan for floor layouts which provided increased light and better ventilation, and also permitted adequate space for recreation areas.

Snyder's concerns also embraced architectural style, and unlike the designs of j many New York schools built after his retirement, Snyder's work was inventive, solid, ' and handsome. His earliest work including P.S. 67, his first known commission, continued the Romanesque Revival style of his predecessor Debevoise. He later moved into Gothic idioms, and was credited with the introduction of the Collegiate Gothic style to New York Public school architecture.

Among his finest Gothic style des