A specialist in the music of the Bidhân region of north-west Africa, Spanish researcher, writer, and musician Violeta Ruano Posada (PhD) has lived for over a year with the displaced Saharawi people of Western Sahara. In the refugee camps in south-west Algeria, Violeta has collaborated with Saharawi cultural authorities, non-government arts organisations, and local people on projects that have promoted Saharawi music, culture, and the Saharawi cause.
Violeta's doctoral research—at the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies (2012–2015)—investigated relationships between music, culture, resistance, and exile for the Saharawi people. In partnership with the British Library and the Saharawi Ministry of Culture, Violeta led Portraits of Saharawi Music (2013–2014), a collaborative project supporting the Saharawi people to document and preserve their musical heritage, and to promote it to an international audience.
Since then, Violeta has played a key role in setting up music education programs for Saharawi children through the non-government organisation Sandblast. She has also been involved with its program Studio-Live, which fosters a flourishing local music industry for artists in the camps. Now returned to Spain, Violeta remains an advocate for the Saharawi people, culture, and political cause. She believes that Saharawi music is inextricably linked with their human rights and with justice: that making themselves heard through music is the Saharawi people's way of telling the rest of the world: "we are here".
