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on which modern North Sudanese music is based. These are classic songs of heart- break and yearning which, in their sim- plest form, Amira tells me, feature just voice and oud. But they are open to all kinds of rearrangement and reinterpreta- tion. Songs to cry into your… well, it’s unlikely to be beer in Sudan. Amira sug- gests mint tea!
T
Munaya (Dreams) is an exile’s lament written by Nadir. “It’s very descriptive about the earth, the land, the Nile and the palm trees. The very picturesque images we have in our minds of quintessential Sudanese things. That aspect of the narrative in mod- ern-day Sudan is very prominent. Because a lot of those who are from our region in the North, had to leave their land. They were farmers, agricultural people, pastoralists and in the end, they had to leave and settle down in the city. As in many countries, there isn’t enough infrastructure, services and support to enable people to stay and continue working the land.”
“At the time of its inde- pendence, Sudan was tipped to become Africa’s bread basket, because the agricul- tural land was so rich and fertile, and also there was so much of it. There was huge production of dates… man- goes… all kinds of things. But then, of course, pover- ty forces people to leave and go to the city. So that today, Khartoum, is home to maybe one-third of the entire population. Why? Because it’s where the schools, the jobs and hospitals are. So people leave that life behind. But that narrative (maybe crowned in a romanticised golden aura) remains. ‘Remember the land, the fields where we used to work. Remember our neighbours who we used to sit and drink tea with. Remember when we used to go down to the river and work on the water- wheel. Remember the birds.’ Munaya is very much about all of that. Nadir wrote it with me in mind, because that’s where I’m from. Even the style, melody and rhythm that he wrote it in are very typical of Northern Sudan.”
The title track is about sur-
render. “Surrendering your- self to the wider powers,” says Amira. “It comes from a personal expe- rience where I felt that there are
he second track, Manoak, is from the traditional Haqibah repertoire, a poetic style that came to prominence in the 1920s and forms the bedrock
some things that are really bigger than us. While we might think that we can exercise a certain level of control in situations and outcomes. For me it was about connecting with a truth, which is this idea of surren- dering to things that are much bigger than us and allowing that. It’s a journey, because I don’t think our education system or any way that we live is intuitively lead- ing us to believe that we should surrender. I think it’s the opposite. Our education and upbringing in wider society (and maybe our family too) tells us ‘OK, you go through education, you work, work, work to get the best grades and then you get a job and you see yourself as someone who has to produce. To amass, whether it’s money or objects. It makes you see the pic- ture in terms of you, a single entity, rather than that there’s a wider system in action. When one piece of the system is broken, we all feel it. Mystic Dance was one of the songs I started writing the earliest. But we didn’t start playing it until further along the line. There was a point where it just
came together and really began to speak to me in a different way and I realised that it reflects the entire body of work. It can be about a relationship between two peo- ple, but it can also be about a person’s relationship to life. Every musician brought in their own energy, which just reaffirmed all of this somehow.”
Zol is from another traditional reper-
toire called Aghani Banat (‘the songs of women’). These are songs based on impro- visation, which usually just feature voice and percussion. “A bunch of women sit- ting together in a circle. One will start to sing and then everyone responds. As in much of Africa, there’s a call-and-response thing going on. Then the next person calls and everyone responds and so it goes round the circle. And everyone who calls can add their own story, can change it a lit- tle bit. From this, a huge body of songs emerged. They’re some of my favourites and I just really wanted to put one of these on the album, because Aghani Banat is such a gem of Sudanese culture.” Her version breaks the ‘women-only’ rule and is sung as a duet with Nadir.
Then there’s her cover of the jazz stan-
dard Speak Low “I’ve always really loved a lot of the jazz standards. I listen to them all the time. They have a magic about them. Especially when they’re more stripped down, when it’s just a piano trio. I’ve always particularly liked Speak Low so we just decided to give it this different arrangement. It wasn’t very rehearsed, it just came together.”
And Sameeri – featured
on last issue’s fRoots 71 compi- lation – is a cover of a song by Sudanese songwriter Ahmed Mohamed Alsheikh, AKA Ajaghreu. “In Sudan and Ethiopia, we have these almost euphoric melodies going on with these fast rhythms. This song, it’s really joyous, it’s really uplifting. I just thought, ‘We really need to put this in’”
amirakheir.com F
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