Discography
Relatively few Sudanese
musicians have access to modern recording studios, although a
couple more have recently been built in Khartoum. A growing number
of Sudanese CDs has been released on the international market,
but few people in Sudan have CD players and many classic performances
are still on tape only - if you can find them at all.
A good selection of cassettes is available from Natari in the UK and Africassette in the US.
For information on field recordings, including Zar and women's music, e-mail or write to: Sudan Update, PO Box 10, Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire HX7 6UX, England. Tel/Fax +44 (0)1422 845827.
Joint Number One Recommendation
Mohammed Wardi
CD Live in Addis Ababa 1994 (Rags Music, UK)
The wrinkled old Nubian effortlessly enraptures an entire stadium,
with his band sailing along like a felucca on the Nile; swaying
strings, tumbling tom-toms, musing saxophones and choppy guitars
create a majestic waltz over which he unfurls his impassioned,
weary choirboy voice.
Joint Number One Recommendation
Cassette - New Sudan Sings (Counterpoint,
UK, 1997)
An essential dose of reality - songs from the war zone. Sudan's
imbalance of power is highlighted by the fact that these stirring
and poignant field recordings by Maggie Hamilton are about the
only musical material from Southern Sudan available at present.
Up to now it's on cassette only, but don't let that put
you off. Among the group chants and hymns - Dinka, Zande, Nuer,
Didinga and other languages - are some extraordinarily beautiful
unaccompanied women's songs. There's a shiver of emotion on hearing
words like "[peace] agreement" and "Killington
[Clinton]" stand out in an otherwise obscure tongue.
Compilations / Various Artists
CD Musiques et chants du Soudan
- l'Ile de Touti (Institute
du Monde Arabe / Blue Silver, France)
From Tuti Island, where the Blue Nile meets the White Nile at
Khartoum, comes this tremendously evocative recording by some
of Sudan's best musicians. Lie back in Tuti Island's lemon groves,
shaded from the scorching sun, and breathe in citrus flute essence
on drifting breezes of violins, as the Nile water gently beats
against the shore. Blissful.
Further CDs planned by Institute du Monde Arabe for 1998-99 include music from the Beja of Eastern Sudan, the Berta of Blue Nile province, the Nuba Mountains and Nubia, as well as artists Abdel Karim el Kabli and Mohammed Ali Gubara.
CD Balabil, Hussein Shendi,
Abdel Aziz el Mubarak
- Live in Eritrea (Rags,
UK)
First chance to hear three-woman group Balabil, specially re-united
for this tour of Eritrea with two of Sudan's top male artists
and a fine backing band.
CD Sudan: Music of the Blue
Nile Province (Auvidis/UNESCO,
France 1996)
The Ingessana and Berta people of Blue Nile, bordering Ethiopia,
are under pressure from war and commercial agriculture and mining,
and their way of life is changing fast. This is a rare chance
to hear their traditional music, including horns, lyres and balafons,
recorded by Robert Gottlieb in the mid-1980s.
CD Rain in the Hills - Beja
Ballads of Port Sudan (Original
Music, USA)
Staking out the distinctive identity of the people of the Red
Sea Hills with vigour and wit, these 1995 field recordings by
John Low feature gritty oud players and a lusty fishermen's band.
CD Sounds of Sudan (World Circuit, UK)
Solo acoustic recordings of Abdel Gadir Salim and Abdel Aziz el Mubarak playing oud, and
the Shaygi tambour player Mohamed Gubara, who wrote Mohammed el Amin's hit Habibi. Highly
informative background notes by Moawia Yassin.
CD The Rough Guide to the Music
of North Africa (World
Music Network, UK)
As well as two characteristic tracks from Abdel Aziz el Mubarak and Abdel Karim el Kabli's albums, this useful
sampler also includes the Nubian Hamza el-Din's delicate Ashranda.
Rasha
CD Sudaniyat (Nubenegra, Germany)
Rasha's first disc convincingly shows off her range, from Sufi
meditations to big band wedding songs, and is eminently listenable.
Backed by a variety of musicians from Sudan and from Spain - her
current home - who innovate but don't intrude, she sings with
a soulful sensitivity. A damn fine starting point.
Setona
CD Tariq Sudan - African Crossroads (Blue
Flame, Germany)
This is urban women's daloka music, tarted up a bit but
still authentic. Setona's voice is swampy, hoarse and gritty,
and only a little inhibited by the studio. It's forgiveable that
the recording doesn't match the headlong intensity of the live
drum-only versions of these songs, because you'd need the Pogues
as a backing band to do that. The opening track, Kumsur, still
has an uninhibited rush. The dance re-mix at the end is a bit
clumpy, but a potential floor-filler nonetheless.
Mohammed
el Amin
The sonorous Mohammed el Amin, now in his mid-50s, has long been
one of Sudan's best-loved singers and composers, and an artistic
hero of the political left. He played legendary concerts in London,
Manchester and Moscow in the 1980s, which spawned thousands of
pirate tapes - but when will someone put his best group recordings
onto the world market?
CD The Voice of Sudan (Haus
der Kulturen der Welt, Germany)
This is an intimate solo acoustic set recorded by Mohammed el
Amin in Berlin in 1991. It captures his smokily majestic voice
and nimble oud playing - the latter sometimes got lost in his
earlier big band outings - in glorious epics such as Habibi, where
the roller-coaster riffing of the 1980s electric version gets
altogether subtler treatment.
Abdel
Aziz el Mubarak
CD Abdel Aziz el Mubarak (GlobeStyle, UK) and Straight from the Heart (World Circuit, UK)
Mr Tuxedo does his Arab nightclub stuff to great effect on both
these CDs, showcasing the lush and ornamented sound of a Khartoum
big band. The live album Straight from the Heart features the
Ethiopian hit Na-Nu Na-Nu, always a crowd-pleaser.
Hamza
el-Din
CD Lily of the Nile (Water Lily Acoustics, USA) has an austere elegance like a night
journey under a starry desert sky. After the hypnotic melancholy
of four epic oud songs comes a compelling tour de force on the
deceptively simple bodhran-like hand-drum called the tar.
CD Songs of the Nile (JVC,
Japan)
Rhythmically interesting set of songs for voices, oud and percussion,
if a little stark, recorded in 1982.
Abdel
Gadir Salim
CD Nujum al-Lail/Stars of the
Night (GlobeStyle,
UK)
Recorded during a London show in 1989, refreshingly faithful to
the live sound of his prestigious big band.
CD The Merdoum Kings Play Songs of Love (World Circuit, UK)
An enduring favourite album: Merdoum is one of the vocal and drum
styles of Kordofan, Abdel Gadir's homeland in western Sudan, and
the professionalism of the all-star band notwithstanding, this
recording has fire and precision, polish and funk.
Abdel
Karim el Kabli
Limaza (Rags, UK)
An album full of musical sparkle, and his best recording to date,
with some stunning interplay between Kabli's oud and the violins,
flute and bongos.
Kamal
Tarbas
CD Ya Rait and
Ayam Safana (EthioSound,
USA)
Two Kamal Tarbas albums issued earlier on cassette were remastered
onto CD in 1997. Every home should have one - although one's probably
enough.
Igd
el Djilad
CD Madaris (pam jaf, Germany 1995)
So bright-eyed and bushy-tailed you might mistake some of the
songs for TV jingles. Sometimes the earnestness is too palpable
in this production, like songs to make children behave well. Why
then do the Nuba and Southern Sudanese songs covered so delicately
by Igd el Djilad still provoke a tear? Probably for the same reason
they get the band into trouble. The Juba Arabic of "Mama"
- a song about poverty - is beautiful, sad and sweet despite the
upbeat tempo. It would make an amazing single in aid of peace
in Sudan.
Tariq
Abubakar
CDs Tour to Africa (Stern's, UK),
Great Africans, and Hobey Laik (Socan,
Canada)
Released between 1994 and 1997, Tariq Abubakar's three albums
venture much further into African musical territory than other
Sudanese artists. Often bold, sunny and bouncing with energy,
he also appeals wistfully for tolerance and diversity. Once you
get used to his growly-bear voice, his fusions have a special
charm. Once a pointer to a peaceful future Abubakar, who died
in 1998, will be painfully missed.
Ahmed
M. Osman (Satoor)
CD Rhythms of Sudan, Volume 1
(Blue Nile, USA)
Multi-tracked, air-conditioned instrumentals of familiar-sounding
songs, more catchy riffs than rhythms, skillfull but a little
antiseptic. Hints of Philly Soul strings and jolly oud make it
pretty painless - until the synthesized handclaps on the remix.
Ideal for an aspiring Sudanese restaurant, or the lobby of the
Khartoum Hilton.
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