Sudan

Artists from Sudan, from the haqiba song tradition and the Khartoum bands of the 1960s to a rap scene shaped by revolt.

Sudanese music sits at a genuine crossroads, drawing on Arabic song, the pentatonic traditions of the Nile valley, and East and West African rhythm in roughly equal measure, which is why it sounds like nothing else in the Arab world.

The haqiba tradition of the early twentieth century gave it a lyric and vocal template; the Khartoum bands of the 1960s and 1970s plugged that into electric guitars and horns and produced the records now sold internationally as Sudanese jazz. The 1989 coup and the public order regime that followed shut much of that down for a generation.

Music returned to the centre of public life during the 2018 and 2019 protests, and the war that began in 2023 has displaced much of the scene again, to Cairo, Nairobi, Kampala and the Gulf.