Diaspora and Exile  2 min Diam Min Tekky : Music from exile to preserve memory

What if you were forced into exile to continue making the art you believe in? Faced with the choice to stay and confront the dictates of censorship, or to leave while carrying their land and their homeland in their hearts, Mar and Ousmane chose the latter scenario. From their arrival in the cold weather of Brussels to their concerts and workshops, Diam Min Tekky survives as a group to give voice to all Mauritanians.

For over twenty years, Mar Bâ and Ousmane Sow have been the voice of a Mauritanian youth too often silenced. Forced into exile to continue rapping freely, they now transform pain and nostalgia into art, between the cobblestones of Brussels and the vibrant memory of their native neighborhood, Sebkha. Their group, Diam Min Tekky—"those who speak with courage"—has become much more than a musical project: an act of resistance.

Roots in Sebkha, resonance in Brussels

On a small cobbled street in Brussels, a rehearsal space vibrates with the bass of a raw beat. Sitting on a stool, Mar scribbles in a worn notebook. Beside him, Ousmane closes his eyes, absorbed by the rhythm. Far from the dusty streets of Nouakchott, the two rappers continue to write the history of a forgotten people.

Born in the late 90s in the sixth district of the Mauritanian capital, they grew up in Sebkha, a neighborhood where social misery, ethnic tensions, and bubbling creativity coexist. Their first track, "Stop à la drogue" ("Stop Drugs"), recorded in a DIY fashion, already revealed an urgency: to speak, to denounce, to survive through words.

"Telling the truth can be costly"

In Mauritania, artistic engagement is quickly seen as a threat. Their name, Diam Min Tekky, becomes synonymous with insubordination. In 2007, Mar was violently assaulted by a police officer after trying to file a complaint for abuse. Their first two albums,Gonga(Truth) andGonga II, were censored. They address taboo subjects head-on: the executions of Black soldiers, disappearances, and refugee camps.
 
Faced with censorship and intimidation, they chose exile. "We couldn't breathe anymore," says Mar. "We had to leave to continue."

Exile as an artistic springboard

Upon arriving in Brussels, they first faced the cold, loneliness, invisibility, and the difficulties encountered by those who arrive unprepared, subjected to the demands of adaptation and the search for a new identity in a European context of rejecting the Other in the face of an increasingly large wave of migration. It's good to have arrived, to have succeeded in the "crossing," but the real battle was only just beginning for these two artists whose European dream clashed with the harsh reality: exile. 
  Today, remembering the difficulties of their arrival in Brussels, they nevertheless feel a sense of satisfaction, recalling the hard times when they struggled to find decent housing, secure meals, and gain acceptance despite the cultural difference.

But exile quickly became a catalyst. "We understood that we had something unique: our story," explains Ousmane. In the Belgian capital, their music transformed. Their beats blended with Bao Sissakho's kora and Daouda Thiam's hoddu. The foundation remains the same: the stories of Sebkha, the pain of absence, the desire for justice. But their perspective is now more lucid, broader.

An art of memory

In 2022, they released "30 Ans" ("30 Years"), an album paying tribute to the victims of the ethnic purges of the 1990s. A trauma experienced by Black Mauritanians, with the execution of hundreds of soldiers and the deportation of tens of thousands of others to Senegal and Mali.
 
Born in exile, this record is a work of memory, a cry against forgetting. At every concert, they resurrect a fragment of Mauritania: the Wolof language, the slogans of the ghettos, the songs in Fula, the anger against the system, but also the tenderness of the working-class neighborhoods.

Their music becomes a space of living memory, a bridge between generations and continents.

Creating, despite the distance

After an absence of over 10 years, the very famous rap group, known for its commitment to social justice, returned to Mauritania on March 2, 2022, to hold a concert where the group intended to present its 3rd musical album entitled "30 ans" to pay homage to the 28 assassinated soldiers and the widows and orphans of the 1989 deportations.

But the group, which had nevertheless obtained authorization, was simply banned from performing. An about-face that serves as a reminder that Mauritania has not yet been cured of its demons.

"Here, no one tells us to stop rapping," says Mar. "But we remain far away. We miss weddings, funerals, familiar faces." This absence inhabits their tracks, like Clandestinor Adouna O Welanie ("I Don't Like This World"). Yet, they refuse a victim mentality.

In Brussels, they run workshops for young people with immigrant histories. Belgians but also Sub-Saharan Africans, or simply citizens of the world collaborate with African and European artists. The group donates a portion of their proceeds to Mauritanian refugees in the Mbera camp in Mali and the Dagana camp in Senegal, with the other portion allowing them to support themselves.

Between two worlds, words as a refuge

In their latest music video, shot on the quays of Brussels, Mar and Ousmane walk between graffiti and silences. Their gaze still carries anger, but also the wisdom of the journey traveled.

A path fraught with obstacles, uncertain, but not useless, born from the suffering of abandoning their family, childhood friends, homeland, and the obligation to adopt a new lifestyle to adapt.

Where they had first arrived almost a decade ago, they no longer had their fixed neighborhood as in Sebkha, but a clear mission: to create, to remember, and to make silenced voices heard. Exile took a part of them, but it offered them the freedom to become what they always were: poets of truth, bearers of memory, men who stand tall.
 

August 2025