Faytinga: the lyre of liberation

In 1976, at sixteen, Dahab Faid Tinga left Asmara to join the Eritrean guerrilla maquis. She was assigned administrative tasks, but it was at the podium where she shone. Armed with a krar — a traditional six-stringed lyre —, she sang for the fighters, conveying hope and determination. Thirty years later, this “combatant turned musician” carried on international stages the voice of her Kunama people, whose father, nicknamed “Fighting Gun” by the British, had defended their rights¹.

In brief

Key dates

From guerrilla to turntables

Faid Tinga Longhi, Faytinga’s father, formed a military orchestra after 1941 to defend the Kunama people¹. The British Administration gave him the nickname “Fighting Gun”. Representing the Kunama until 1962, he was imprisoned by the Ethiopian regime before being liberated in 1974 by EPLF guerrillas.

At sixteen, Faytinga headed for the maquis. Trained in Bilekat, she was assigned bureaucratic tasks but it was her voice that she mobilized first. “She transformed her dream of singing into a mission: to distract and galvanize fighters with music of hope”. At the end of the 1980s, she set up a radio program in the Kunama language and joined the national committee of the Eritrean Women’s Union in Sudan.

The krar became her instrument of choice. Her style, “forged on the ground”, fused traditions from several Eritrean communities.

Opening to the world

In 1990, Faytinga toured Europe and the United States with the Sibrit Cultural Troupe, representing emerging Eritrean culture. Upon returning to her country, she published Sala Da Goda on cassette in 1996.

Her international breakthrough came in two stages. In 1999, an invitation to the Africolor festival in France. The turning point: Numey was released in January 2000 on Cobalt Records, a Parisian label. All tracks are in Kunama — the title track means “Do not cut off the narrator”, a song of advice. The album revealed the resemblance between the wata, Eritrean lute-bass, and the West African ngoni. That same year, Faytinga won Ma’ Africa in Benoni².

Eritrea, released in November 2003, broadened the palette: guitar, flute and percussion were added to the krar and wata. Tracks like Goda Anna and Milomala — the latter drawn from independence battles — remain among the most widely disseminated³.

Ambassador, activist and legacy

Faytinga embodied the cultural ambassador of Eritrea in Johannesburg (2002), Aichi (2005) and Shanghai (2010). She campaigned against AIDS, singing during the 2003 World Day in Asmara and participating in a charity gala in 2005 with Kenyan singer Achieng’ Abura¹.

Musically, she continued: singles Besela (2016), Kebkeba Kone (2017), Tsela’ika (2021) and Erey (2025). She collaborated with trumpeter Hermon Mehari for Asmara (2022) and sang during France Musique’s “Couleurs du Monde” in 2016. “I sing peace, love and understanding, because war brought no positive change to Africa. I bring people music of hope”⁴.

For Music in Africa in 2016, she declared: “I discovered that music is a universal language that gives me peace and tranquility”⁵.

Marco Cavallarin, in Africa e Mediterraneo, described her as “an interpreter of the deep culture of her country and its oldest and most recent history”. “There is no easy path to success”¹, she concludes.

Her legacy reads in the maintenance of Kunama in the contemporary musical repertoire and in opening doors for Eritrean female musicians.

Major works

Legacy

Faytinga remains, in Marco Cavallarin’s words, “an interpreter of the deep culture of her country”⁴. Her lyre continues to play, twenty-five years after the maquis.

Sources and references