Sudanese Music and Dance Festival

New York City, New York, Central Park SummerStage. July 21, 2007

1st Annual SUDANESE MUSIC & DANCE FESTIVAL
Legendary Sudanese artists reunited for a united & peaceful Sudan. This concert was a landmark event and was backed by the Nile Orchestra, dozens of artists, many to be flown in from the Sudan, in addition to Sudanese ex-patriots, this legendary number of performers were united on stage for this very rare concert.
The Sudanese Music and Dance Festival event was produced by Dawn Elder, a music producer and manager who has worked with one of the greatest living Sudanese singers, Mohammed Wardi, with her co-producer of the event, Mahmoud Mutwakil, M.D.
Doctor Mutwakil, who is also the head of the Sudan Information Center, joined Ms. Elder in organizing the presentation of this four hour event in New York City's Central Park SummerStage. Dr. Mutwakil expressed his realization that the one overriding motivation for all involved with the July 21st concert was everyone's desire to "work for a united, peaceful, democratic, and just Sudan." He went on to say "It's time that these senseless wars stop and that people sit down and solve their problems once and for all."
StayTunedtv.tv has begun uploading a variety of the songs presented in the festival and will continue to add a selection from the event.

From the New York Times

July 23, 2007

MUSIC REVIEW | SUDANESE MUSIC AND DANCE FESTIVAL

Celebrating Sudan, With Songs of Peace and Protest

By JON PARELES

For the length of a concert on Sunday afternoon at Central Park SummerStage, Sudan was symbolically made whole. At the Sudanese Music and Dance Festival, dozens of performers shared the stage. They came from northern and southern Sudan, which ended a civil war with a 2005 peace agreement, and Darfur in western Sudan, where violence continues.

Many of the performers are now expatriates, in part because the strict Islamic sharia law now enforced in Sudan has severely restricted music. Muslim women danced onstage with their heads uncovered, as they cannot do in Sudan. And an American audience, as well as the Sudanese who cheered lyrics in Nubian and Arabic, had a very rare glimpse of a tenacious musical culture. It was multi camera videotaped for Webcast by director/producer John Kuri and will be seen on StayTunedTV.tv.

There were traditional and new songs, including one about the city of Kajbar, where snipers recently fired on a peaceful protest march. There were songs about the land of Sudan, which is Africa’s largest country in area. There were songs about lost love, about beautiful girls, about mourning and about unity. In mini-sets of a few songs each, singers chose material from across the regions of Sudan. Nearly all of it was dance music.

Sudan’s music is not insular. It takes in Arabic and Egyptian influences from the north; the Nile Music Orchestra, which accompanied the singers and duos, resembled an Egyptian pop orchestra, including strings, saxophones and accordion. (Ancient Nubia overlapped what is now Egypt and Sudan.) From the South, Sudanese music draws on sub-Saharan rhythms — often six-beat, three-against-two patterns — and modal or pentatonic melodies, along with the gleaming lines of Congolese-style electric guitars. Vocal styles arrive from both directions, with Arabic-style glides and quavers — echoed by the strings — or African leaps and exhortations.

There are also touches of Western styles. The strongest music was a kind of Sudanese funk, similar to music from Ethiopia but with Sudanese roots. Different grooves — galloping, handclapping, bouncing, pattering — backed the singers Ali al Sigeed, Atif Anees, Al Balabil, Omar Bannaga, Ahmed Bass, Abd Al Hadi, Osama al Elshekh and Hadeel & Azza. Yousif Elmosley, the music director, also took a turn as singer, remaking a traditional song with new lyrics urging men to support women.

Triplet rhythms moved in syncopated, overlapping patterns as violins introduced melodies and countermelodies, then replied to the vocal lines, along with the saxophones. Omar Bannaga, who updates traditional songs, started with a sustained vocal prelude like a classical Arabic singer, then moved into a galloping, accelerating beat that pulled people upfront to dance. Abd Al Hadi began one song with a tambur, a traditional Nubian lyre, to be joined by the orchestra with an Afro-Cuban lilt. Emmanuel Kembe looked to the West, using a reggae beat and singing part of his songs in English, urging change in Sudan.

The concert featured two-thirds of one of Sudan’s most popular groups: Al Balabil (the Nightingales). They are a trio of sisters, formed in 1971, who continue to record and perform together. Two sisters who now live in the United States, Amal and Hadia Abdelmageed, appeared on Sunday while the third sister remained in Sudan. Their four songs — with high, curving unison vocal lines as asymmetrical as traditional music — were drawn from western, central and southern Sudan, and their mini-set included a costume change, from national to Nubian-style dresses.

The final songs were by Omar Ihsas, who is from Darfur. “We are all here for our homeland, for Sudan,” he said. With vehement, determined phrases, his song urged, “Let’s live together."