Tariq Abubakar
After playing in Ali Hassan
(Walk like a Nubian) Kuban's band in Egypt for two years, Sudanese
saxophonist-singer Tariq Abubakar settled in Toronto, Canada,
in the 1990s. He became one of that country's best-known African
musicians, and a video at the end of 1997 put him on all the music
TV channels. His band, the Afro-Nubians, threw influences
from Zaire/Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia and Ghana into a bubbling blend
that had mass appeal as dance music in the West, while referring
across theAfrican continent to the sounds of Hugh Masekela, Thomas
Mapfumo and Tabu Ley Rochereau. Tariq would set Arabic lyrics
to soukous melodies, dissolving Sudan's north-south cultural divide,
and ventured to sing earnestly of peace and unity in his rumbling
English. During a brief return to Sudan in January 1998, Tariq
was killed in a car accident on his way to Khartoum airport. He
was 32.