10.1111/(ISSN)1548-1425 AMET American Ethnologist American Ethnologist 0094-0496 1548-1425 10.1111/amet.13076 AMET13076 Original Article Original Articles Listening to love Aural attention, vocal iconicity, and intimacy in Somaliland Listening to love in Somaliland WOOLNER CHRISTINA J. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0252-7741 cjw204@cam.ac.uk * 1 Department of Social Anthropology University of Cambridge Email: cjw204@cam.ac.uk 27 04 2022 © 2022 by the American Anthropological Association © 2022 The Authors. American Ethnologist published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of American Anthropological Association. 2022 © 2022 The Authors. American Ethnologist published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of American Anthropological Association. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is noncommercial and no modifications or adaptations are made. ABSTRACT

Both music and love are conspicuously absent from the public soundscapes of Hargeysa, Somaliland. But behind closed doors, people listen to love songs. In doing so, these lonely love sufferers and love hopefuls make sense of various challenges. Using accounts from a cross section of Somalilanders, I show that these solitary listening practices open into uniquely intimate and transformative opportunities for dareen‐wadaag (feeling sharing). These opportunities critically depend both on listeners’ attention and intention, and on the culturally elaborated affective affordances of love songs’ “voice”—a voice that is conceived as “love incarnate” and that models intimacy. In short, listeners do not just listen to love songs; they listen to love. Their listening practices call for anthropological models that more fully account for the relationship between culturally situated ears and voices, as well as for the complex interrelation of sound, affect, and subjectivity. [listening, aurality, love and intimacy, voice, iconicity, sound and affect, music, Somaliland]