The BK–Weedhsame Brawl: Behind the Noise Lies a Broken Music Industry. By Mohamed Ahmed Abdi Ba'aluul

 The BK–Weedhsame Brawl: Behind the Noise Lies a Broken Music Industry.

​I. The Surface Spark: The BK–Weedhsame Feud

​The viral brawl between the artists on social media is the talk of the day. Mr. BK, once a widely adored singer, could not quite find himself in the pulsating stages and thunderous applause after he returned from the solemn mosque sermons to the boisterous art scene, so he started kicking up dust and dirt at his prominent poet, describing Weedhsame’s lyrics as tasteless claptrap without his voice and distinctive melodic engineering. It was an interesting and rather refreshing break from the endless political talk to see the fans divided along the lines of BK and Weedhsame. Even the so-called artistic elite are now among the increasingly heated fighting line-ups. It happens at a time when there is still no intellectual-property law that clearly defines the blurred boundaries between the creative roles of lyricists, composers, vocalists, musicians, and the largely invisible audio and visual editors who toil quietly behind the scenes to produce the blaring playbacks through which fake-performing singers take the stage at the expense of those other creators.

​Yet beneath the dust and dirt of this particular artistic quarrel lies a much larger and far more consequential question: when a song begins generating money, who actually gets paid?
That question is considerably more complicated than the spectacle of one singer standing before a microphone. A song may begin with a poet's words, acquire a composer's melody, pass through the voice of a vocalist, gather the work of instrumentalists and arrangers, and then undergo the painstaking intervention of producers, recording engineers, editors, and mastering technicians before it emerges as the polished recording that the public eventually hears. By the time the song reaches the audience, the creative labour that produced it may have passed through many hands, even though only one face may appear on the poster.
The distinction becomes sharper once the song begins to generate commercial value. A recording can earn money through streaming, sales, radio broadcasts, licensing, live performances, social-media exploitation, and other forms of commercial use. The money generated from these uses may pass through several layers of rights holders, platforms, distributors, and other intermediaries. The precise division depends on the platform, territory, contractual arrangements, and the particular rights involved. There is therefore no universal “70/30” rule under which every streaming service simply gives seventy per cent to creators and keeps thirty per cent for itself.
The deeper problem is that the public often hears a song as one indivisible thing when the law and the music business may see several different interests inside it. There is the composition—principally the lyrics and melody—and there is the master recording, the particular sound recording in which that composition has been performed, arranged, recorded, produced, and fixed. Those interests can belong to different contributors and can be subject to different forms of ownership or control. The person who wrote the words is not necessarily the person who owns the recording; the person who supplied the voice is not automatically the owner of the composition; and a producer may hold contractual interests in the recording without having written a single line of the song.
All of this tends to disappear beneath the glare of the stage.

​The audience sees one singer, one microphone, and one performer standing beneath the lights. What it hears, however, may be the accumulated work of a lyricist, composer, musicians, arranger, backing-vocal performers, vocal producer, recording engineer, editor, mixer, mastering technician, and others whose names may never appear when the applause begins. The singer becomes the visible face of a much larger creative construction.

​The microphone makes one person visible. The speakers make many people's work audible. The applause, however, usually follows the person the audience can see.

​II. The Root Causes of Industry Vulnerability
​That imbalance between the visible performer and the invisible creator also has a history. The Somali music industry was not born as today's fragmented private market. Under the socialist regime of Maxamed Siyaad Barre, a substantial part of musical and theatrical production operated through a state-controlled cultural system. Iconic groups such as Waaberi, Iftin, and Onkod, alongside other government-supported artistic institutions, were woven into a structure in which the state provided much of the organisational, financial, broadcasting, and performance infrastructure. Artists were often sustained through institutions rather than through the modern private chain of recording ownership, licensing, royalties, and commercial exploitation.

​This was not a world without independent artists or private musical activity, nor did copyright as a legal concept simply vanish. But the economic organisation of music was fundamentally different. Creative production was heavily embedded in state institutions, and the relationship between individual creators and the commercial ownership of their works was far less developed than the private music economy that would emerge later.

​Then the state collapsed, and with it much of the machinery that had organised the artistic world.

The music survived. The institutional scaffolding did not.

​What followed was an uneven migration from state-organised cultural production towards a private and increasingly market-driven music economy. The salaried troupe gave way to the independent singer; the government-supported production structure gave way to private studios and producers; state broadcasting was joined by private media, cassettes, satellite television, social media, and digital platforms. The old institutional relationship between artist and state was gradually replaced by a looser and more commercially exposed relationship between artist, poet, producer, promoter, distributor, platform, and audience.
But the rights architecture did not grow at the same pace.

​The industry became increasingly private before the rules governing private creative ownership, licensing, attribution, and revenue-sharing became equally clear and effective. The old system had disappeared, but no comparably coherent private system had fully taken its place. In the space between the two emerged a fragmented artistic society in which personal relationships, reputation, visibility, informal understandings, and bargaining power can sometimes carry more practical weight than clearly documented rights.

​III. The Economic Consequence: Exploitation Through Invisibility

​That historical gap is important because the modern song is no longer merely a performance. It is a commercial asset with a life of its own.

A poem can become a melody. A melody can become a recording. A recording can become a playback. A playback can become a stage performance. A performance can gather an audience, and an audience can generate money. At each turn, however, the creative contribution may belong to more than the person standing beneath the spotlight.

​This is where disputes such as the BK–Weedhsame quarrel begin to reveal something larger than the quarrel itself. When the boundaries between poet, composer, vocalist, musician, producer, and recording technician remain unclear, an artistic disagreement can quickly acquire a second life as a dispute over ownership, recognition, privilege, and money. The more successful the song becomes, the more valuable those unresolved interests become.

​The problem, therefore, is not simply that artists argue. Artists have always argued. The deeper problem is what happens when an industry moves from state-supported artistic production to private commercial exploitation without developing equally strong mechanisms for allocating the value created by collective artistic labour.

​The playback stage makes that weakness particularly visible. Once a fully completed recording is placed behind a singer, the performer can occupy the entire stage while the labour embedded in the recording disappears behind the speakers. Visibility begins to cast a long shadow over authorship. The singer becomes the public face of a work whose creative identity may have been built by many others.

​And when that work begins generating money, invisibility can become economic invisibility.
A lyricist may have created the words. A composer may have created the melody. Musicians may have supplied the instrumental performance. A producer may have shaped the sound. Engineers and editors may have transformed raw recordings into the finished product. Yet without clear arrangements concerning attribution, ownership, licensing, and remuneration, the person most visible to the audience may become the person most readily associated with the value of the entire work.

That is how artistic privilege can grow out of structural uncertainty.

​The strongest bargaining position can begin to substitute for the strongest legal right. The most recognisable performer may command the audience, the stage, and the commercial relationship, while the less visible creator struggles to establish what portion of the work belongs to them and what economic benefit should follow from that contribution.

​IV. The Pathway to Reform
​This is why intellectual-property law matters. It is not merely a weapon against piracy. It is the institutional architecture through which creative labour is turned into recognisable economic interests. It should provide clarity concerning authorship, ownership, licensing, attribution, remuneration, performances and recordings, and remedies when recognised rights are infringed.

Where that architecture is incomplete or difficult to enforce, uncertainty travels from the law book into the studio, from the studio onto the stage, from the stage to the streaming account, and finally into the creator's pocket.
​Until that supporting framework becomes sufficiently clear and effective, private contractual discipline becomes particularly important. Before the microphone is switched on, before the playback begins, before the song reaches the radio, and certainly before the first dollar—or shilling—begins to flow, collaborators need to establish their respective contributions and economic interests as clearly as possible.
A properly drafted agreement can record who wrote the lyrics, who composed the melody, who performed the music, who produced the recording, who owns or controls the master, how revenue will be divided, how attribution will be given, who may license the work, and what happens if the song unexpectedly becomes commercially successful.

​Such questions may sound painfully unromantic in the middle of an artistic collaboration. But they are considerably less painful than answering them after the song has become a hit.

Without clear statutory protection and without clear, enforceable private agreements operating within such a framework, the completed song can become a kind of commercial orphan: everyone can hear it, everyone can enjoy it, someone can perform it, platforms can monetise it, audiences can applaud it, yet the people whose labour created its value may struggle to establish exactly what they are legally and economically entitled to receive.
That is where the absence of effective intellectual-property protection becomes more than a technical legal deficiency. It becomes a direct economic problem for the creative class.
​

V. Conclusion
​And that is why the BK–Weedhsame quarrel is more interesting than a mere exchange of artistic insults.

​Beneath the competing loyalties of fans, the social-media noise, the poetic jabs, and the arguments over whose artistic contribution carries the greater weight lies a much more enduring problem for the Somali music industry. The real difficulty is not simply deciding which artist deserves the louder applause. It is creating a system in which the different people who make a song possible can have their contributions properly recognised, their rights clearly defined, their names appropriately attached, and their economic interests fairly protected.

​A commercially successful song may begin as a poem, acquire a melody, pass through a vocalist, gather instrumental performances, receive production and technical refinement, and eventually become a recording capable of generating income long after everyone has left the studio. Its commercial life may therefore extend far beyond the moment of creation, while the rights and economic interests arising from that creation may continue to matter for years.

That continuing economic life is precisely why informal assumptions are not enough. Popularity cannot substitute for ownership. Applause cannot substitute for attribution. A microphone cannot substitute for a contract. And commercial success cannot, by itself, determine who is legally entitled to the value generated by the work.

​What is needed is a clear legal architecture capable of recognising creative contributions, defining corresponding rights, documenting ownership, regulating licensing, facilitating remuneration, and providing meaningful remedies when those rights are violated.
The microphone may belong to one person.
The spotlight may fall upon one performer.
The applause may erupt for one voice.
But the song may have been created by many hands.

​And unless the law is capable of recognising those hands, the loudest voice may continue to receive the loudest applause—and the least visible creator may continue to receive the least protection.

Chief of Justice or Chief of Tax Collection?

The Bar Association has taken the position that was legally required in opposing the treatment of judicial services as a revenue-generating or revenue-collection mechanism, to be administered in the same manner as other executive government institutions. However, if the matter does not end there, a further question necessarily arises: what is the appropriate legal course of action that should follow?

From the perspective of justice-seekers, the Association has informed the public that the increased tariffs imposed on court services are unlawful. The more fundamental legal question, however, is whether the unlawfulness arises solely from the increase in those tariffs, or whether the tariffs themselves were without lawful basis ab initio. This question is particularly pertinent given the longstanding practice whereby a person seeking judicial relief, or his or her advocate, was required to affix or attach a tax-payment receipt to the relevant complaint or pleading; absent such a receipt, the court registry would reportedly refuse to receive or register the complaint in the first place.

The next legal question, therefore, is this: if an administrative action lies against the Ministry of Finance, or if a constitutional claim may properly be brought on the basis of the constitutional principle of the separation of powers and the fundamental right of access to justice, before which forum should such proceedings be instituted so as to challenge and seek the invalidation of these tariffs and, in doing so, vindicate the rights of those seeking access to justice?

The issue becomes particularly complex where the Supreme Court itself, and more specifically its Chief Justice, has issued or caused to be implemented a judicial circular through which the increased tariffs have been brought into effect.

That circumstance gives rise to a further and more fundamental question concerning judicial independence, institutional competence, the lawful authority to prescribe or impose charges for judicial services, the separation of powers, and the availability of an effective mechanism for reviewing or challenging an administrative or regulatory instrument issued by the head of the very institution responsible for adjudicating such a challenge.

Accordingly, the issue cannot be reduced merely to the assertion that the increased tariffs are unlawful. A proper legal analysis requires, at a minimum, that the following questions be determined:

1. What was the legal basis, if any, for the tariffs previously imposed on judicial services?

2. What statutory or constitutional authority, if any, empowered the relevant institution to increase those tariffs?

3. Which institution possesses the lawful authority to prescribe, approve, impose, or amend fees and tariffs applicable to judicial services?

4. What legal mechanism and competent forum are available for challenging and invalidating tariffs imposed without lawful authority or in excess of the powers conferred upon the issuing institution?

5. What effective avenue of judicial or constitutional redress is available to a justice-seeker where the impugned circular, directive, or measure originates from the leadership of the judiciary itself, particularly from the Chief Justice?

These questions go beyond the legality of the increased tariffs as such. They concern the source and limits of institutional power, the legality of delegated authority, the constitutional allocation of governmental powers, the independence and accountability of the judiciary, and the practical availability of an effective remedy for persons whose access to the courts is conditioned upon the payment of charges whose legal basis is itself in question.

 

Somaliland: The Tollbooth at the Temple Gates: Why Somaliland’s Legal Aid Bill Must Rise Beyond Paper Promises. By Advoc.

The Tollbooth at the Temple Gates: Why Somaliland’s Legal Aid Bill Must Rise Beyond Paper Promises.

 By Advoc. Mohamed Ahmed Abdi Ba'aluul.

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Walk into the open, crowded space leading into the Hargeisa Regional Court and you encounter a picture of justice far removed from the quiet dignity of legal texts. The entrance is a restless human crossroads: police officers moving detainees through the corridors, handcuffed and closely guarded; lawyers hurrying between courtrooms with files pressed beneath their arms; anxious relatives waiting for news; accused persons sitting silently under the watch of officers; clerks in blue shirts moving briskly from office to office with papers and case files; and ordinary citizens standing in bewilderment, trying to understand a system whose language and procedures can seem like a maze. Every corner carries a different story of conflict, accusation, debt, injury, divorce, imprisonment or disputed property. For many of those who enter through those doors, however, the first obstacle is not the law itself. It is the cost of reaching it.

For a poor citizen, justice can sometimes look less like an open public institution and more like a row of tollbooths. A litigant may face court fees calculated as a percentage of the value of a claim, potentially reaching three or four per cent of the disputed amount, alongside various procedural expenses and fragmented charges. For a wealthy litigant, such payments may be an inconvenience. For a struggling trader, a casual labourer, a widow, a displaced family or a low-income household, they can be a wall. Imagine a small trader with a legitimate claim of $3,000. The amount may represent years of savings, the capital of a modest business, or money desperately needed to support a family. Yet before the merits of his case are even heard, he may find himself calculating whether he can afford the journey to the courthouse at all.

This is the uncomfortable reality that any serious discussion of legal aid must confront.

Somaliland therefore needs a Legal Aid Law. But it needs more than a law that sounds progressive, looks impressive in a parliamentary record and gathers dust on a shelf. It needs a law that works in the corridors of police stations, in crowded courtrooms, in detention facilities and in the homes of people who have never before had the confidence or means to approach a lawyer. It needs a law capable of carrying justice across the financial and institutional barriers that currently separate the ordinary citizen from the protection of the law.

The Legal Aid Bill is an important opportunity. But Parliament should resist the temptation to measure success by the mere passage of legislation. A legal aid system is not successful because the statute book contains the words “legal aid.” It succeeds when a poor detainee can actually speak to a lawyer, when an indigent accused person is represented before the court, when a vulnerable litigant can bring or defend a legitimate claim, and when the absence of money does not silently determine who gets justice and who does not.

The centre of such a system must be the beneficiary—not the bureaucracy.

The first question should therefore be simple: Where does a person without money encounter the justice system, and who will be there to help?w

The answer should not be a distant government office buried somewhere inside an administrative hierarchy. It should be the community paralegal who explains the first legal steps; the duty solicitor waiting at a police station; the lawyer standing beside an accused person before the first crucial hearing; the public defender preparing a case; and the legal-aid officer who can guide a poor litigant through an otherwise bewildering process.

These are the people who should form the living machinery of legal aid.

There is a danger, however, that the Bill could create a large administrative structure while leaving the frontline weak. Offices can be established. Directors can be appointed. committees can be formed. Regulations can be drafted. Reports can be produced. Budgets can be consumed. Yet none of this, by itself, puts a lawyer beside a frightened detainee at the moment that lawyer is needed.

A legal aid system should therefore be built from the ground up, not from the roof down. Somaliland does not need a grand bureaucratic monument to legal aid. It needs a functioning bridge between the citizen and the law.

That means putting resources where the legal crisis actually occurs: at police stations, detention centres, courthouses and within communities. The person who has lost his freedom, the family that cannot afford counsel, and the litigant who cannot navigate the legal system should not have to climb through layers of administration before discovering whether someone will help them.

The Bill must also be carefully fitted into Somaliland’s existing legal architecture. Legal aid cannot operate as an isolated island in the middle of the justice system. Its provisions must be harmonised with the Criminal Procedure Code, the Judicial Administration Act and other laws governing police powers, prosecution, courts and legal representation. Where laws overlap, the Bill should make responsibilities clear. Where mandates intersect, the boundaries should be unmistakable. Otherwise, a law designed to open doors could create new corridors of confusion.

This is particularly important in criminal cases, where time is not a minor administrative detail. For a person who has been arrested and deprived of liberty, every hour can matter. The right to legal representation cannot be transformed into a bureaucratic waiting room.

The proposed fifteen-day period for evaluating eligibility deserves especially serious reconsideration. A detainee does not experience detention as an administrative timetable. Fifteen days can be an eternity to someone behind bars, particularly when questioning, statements, bail, remand and other critical procedural decisions may arise long before an eligibility assessment is completed. A constitutional right to counsel cannot meaningfully exist if the person entitled to that right must first wait for an administrative determination of whether he or she is poor enough to receive it.

The solution is not complicated: where immediate legal assistance is necessary, representation should begin provisionally, with financial eligibility being determined alongside or shortly thereafter. The courthouse door should not remain locked while an official searches for the key.

This principle becomes even more important when considering the enforcement of legal-aid rights.

A law that says police officers must inform detainees of their right to counsel is only as strong as the consequences for failing to do so. A law that says lawyers must be allowed access to their clients must answer what happens when that access is obstructed. A law that guarantees representation must explain what happens when a person is interrogated, pressured or required to make statements without the assistance to which the law entitles them.

Rights without remedies are fragile things. They can look impressive in legislation while becoming almost weightless in practice.

The Bill should therefore contain clear reporting, investigation and accountability mechanisms. Where officials deliberately or negligently frustrate a person's legal-aid rights, there should be consequences. Where evidence or statements are obtained in serious breach of protected procedural rights, the law should provide meaningful remedies, including appropriate rules concerning their admissibility. Otherwise, legal aid risks becoming a polite promise made to people who have no power to enforce it.

The same practical seriousness should apply to lawyers themselves.

A legal-aid lawyer cannot provide effective representation if access to the client is repeatedly delayed, confidential consultations are obstructed, case files are withheld, or court appearances are treated as a favour rather than a professional right. The lawyer must be able to meet the client, review the evidence, prepare the defence and speak freely with the person represented. Legal aid is not simply about assigning a lawyer's name to a case. It is about giving that lawyer the practical conditions necessary to do the job.

The Bill should therefore recognise that representation is a service, not a ceremonial appointment.

Nor should legal aid be confined narrowly to the moment when a person enters a courtroom. Many legal problems begin long before litigation. A community member may need advice before signing an agreement. A family may need assistance before a dispute becomes a criminal complaint. A detainee may need counsel before giving a statement. A poor litigant may need help understanding whether a claim is legally viable before spending scarce money pursuing it.

This is why community-based legal assistance and paralegal services matter. They can become the first bridge across the gap between ordinary people and a legal system that often appears distant, technical and intimidating.

But the Bill must also be financially realistic. Legal aid cannot be created by legislation alone. Lawyers must be paid. Paralegals must be trained. Duty schemes must be staffed. Offices require resources. Transportation, communication, case management and supervision all cost money. If the state creates an entitlement without providing a credible mechanism for financing it, the promise will eventually collide with reality.

That collision is precisely what Parliament should prevent.

The legislators therefore face a choice that is larger than the wording of individual clauses. They can create a legal-aid system that looks orderly on paper but struggles at the point of delivery, or they can design a lean, practical and enforceable system that begins with the person standing outside the courtroom wondering whether justice is something he can actually afford.

The distinction matters.

Somaliland has passed many laws before. The challenge is not always the absence of legal language; it is the distance between legal language and everyday reality. A right written beautifully in a statute can still be useless to a person who cannot pay the filing fee, cannot find a lawyer, cannot reach a duty solicitor, cannot meet counsel in confidence, or cannot obtain assistance before an irreversible procedural step has taken place.

Legal aid should close that distance.

That is why Parliament should pause before passing the Legal Aid Bill in its present form. **There is little value in replacing one locked door with another, or in building a bridge that ends halfway across the river. A weak Legal Aid Law could give Somaliland the appearance of reform while leaving the poor stranded on the same side of justice. The country does not need a law merely to fill the statute book. It needs a law that can carry the weight placed upon it—a law that opens the courthouse door not only in words, but in reality.**

The test should therefore be brutally simple: when a poor citizen arrives at a police station, a detention centre or the courthouse, will this law actually help him?

Will a lawyer be available?

Will that lawyer be able to meet him?

Will the person be informed of his rights?

Will financial eligibility prevent immediate assistance?

Will there be a remedy when an official obstructs access?

Will the system have enough money to function?

Will responsibility be clear between the legal-aid authority, police, prosecutors and courts?

And, above all, will the law still work when the person standing before it has no money, no influence and no powerful name?

Those are the questions Parliament should answer before the Bill is passed.

Because legal aid is ultimately not about offices, forms or administrative titles. It is about whether justice remains justice when the person seeking it is poor.

The crowded entrance of the Hargeisa Regional Court offers a fitting reminder. Behind every file moving through the hands of a blue-shirted clerk is a human being waiting for an outcome. Behind every police escort is a person whose liberty may depend on what happens next. Behind every anxious relative is a family carrying uncertainty. Behind every lawyer rushing through those corridors is an attempt to translate the abstract language of law into something real.

The law should meet those people there—not somewhere far behind another locked door.

Somaliland does not merely need a Legal Aid Law. **It needs a working legal-aid system: constitutionally coherent, financially accessible, institutionally lean, properly harmonised with existing laws, centred on beneficiaries, and equipped with teeth strong enough to enforce the rights it promises.

Parliament has the opportunity to build precisely that.

It should not settle for a law that merely hangs a sign above the door.

    It should make sure the door actually opens.