Abdel Gadir Salim - Le Blues de Khartoum/Khartoum Blues (1999)

«When Abdel Gadir Salim, the exceptional singer, composer and oud (Sudanese lute) player was a student at the prestigious Institute of Music & Drama in Khartoum, he turned for inspiration to the music of his native Kordofan. The province of Kordofan is a desert region to the west of the country, where most of the people are nomadic cattle herders. They came to this part of Sudan from every corner of the Islamic empire, bringing with them the rich traditions of Arabic culture, which has changed, developed and adapted in response to the passing years.

So the songs of Kordofan owe much to Arabic traditions but are sung in colloquial dialect with melodies and rhythms that have a flavour distinctive of Kordofan.
Although the pentatonic scale dominates Sudanese music traditional and modern there is a tendency in Kordofan to introduce half and even quarter tones bringing the music closer to classical Arabic traditions. And there is the distinctive 6/8 rhythm of the mardoum wedding dance which has inspired so many songs throughout the region.
Salim took some of the lyrics, he took the melodies and the rhythm of Kordofan and played them on the oud. He brought together musicians to play violins, electric guitars, organ, accordion, and percussion. Together they played the music of the western nomads but they played in concert halls, on radio and television and the songs of Kordofan became known and loved throughout Sudan.
Salim is not from a family of musicians. He was born in El Obeid the first Oasis town on the western edge of Sudan. He trained first as a teacher but, already an accomplished oud player, was awarded a five year scholarship to study music at the Institute. In recent years, between giving concerts in Sudan and throughout Europe, the Middle East and Africa, Salim is headmaster of a Sudanese school in Chad. In 2005 Salim teamed up with young Sudanese rapper Emmanuel Jal to release the acclaimed album Ceasefire.» (SoundsofSudan)

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Emmanuel Jal & Abdel Gadir Salim - Ceasefire (2005)

«The old meets the new, and Northern & Southern Sudan are united, briefly, in this fine offering. Abdel G. Salim is one of the old-guard Sudanese oud players from even before the civil war. That war put an end to most of the music in the country and is still going on in the worst display of international ineptitude in the face of genocide since Rwanda. Salim suffered more than being silenced when he was stabbed by some fundamentalist who wanted to wipe out music in Khartoum. Emmanuel Jal is one of the child soldiers press-ganged into the Liberation army on the other side of the conflict and trained to kill by the age of 8. Children have no fear and make ideal soldiers, as the various fighting factions in the world have discovered. After a failed assault on Juba, thousands of these child soldiers set out to walk to the Upper Nile region they had started from but most perished on the way. Hunger, thirst, disease and animal attacks led to cannibalism & the decimation of their ranks till only a handful made it back. During a ceasefire, when he was 11, Jal met an international aid worker from UK who snuck him in her baggage to Kenya and saw that he was enrolled in school […]. Jal has grown up a bit and turned rapper and his songs are about his experiences. He is now a spokesman for the campaign to stop the recruitment of child soldiers but it's rather a moot point.

The Merdoum All Stars, Salim's band, add their funky sax and guitar to the young rapper's songs while his posse, the Reborn Warriors, get to throw down during the Merdoum pieces. (Merdoum is a 6/8 beat from Western Sudan's desert.) The result is not chaos but a great mix around the central theme of "Peace." The opener "Aiwa (Yes)" is a strong blend of rap over a thudding backbeat that reminded me a little of On-U Sound but overlain with atmospheric flute, xylophone and arabic bass rather than reggae bass. The first two tracks flow well together like a mini hip-hopera, but then we arrive at the familiar terrain of the Merdoum All Stars: accordion, hand-percussion and soothing vocals. Just when you get mellowed by the Merdoum kings, Jal drops his big one on you: track 6, "Gua," which has already appeared on the Rough Guide To Sudan, and went to Number One on the East African charts in September 2004. The word means "good" in Nuer and "power" in Arabic. […] A great encounter and a ray of hope for Sudan.» (Muzikifan)

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Ahmed Abdul-Malik - East Meets West (1959)

«The late Ahmed Abdul-Malik was one of the first musicians to integrate non-Western musical elements into jazz. Best known to jazz listeners as a bassist with Thelonious Monk, Randy Weston, Coleman Hawkins, and many others, he made a few records as a leader, with this one being his most exotic and also the hardest to find. The Brooklyn native was of Sudanese descent; in addition to playing bass on this interesting blend of Middle Eastern instruments with those from the world of jazz, he also plays oud, the forerunner to the lute. The musicians on Malik's eight originals vary from track to track. On the mournful "La Ibky (Don't Cry)," Malik's oud shares the spotlight with a tenor sax (either Benny Golson or Johnny Griffin) plus trumpeter Lee Morgan. "Rooh (The Soul)" features the 72-string kanoon (which is sort of a brittle sounding and much smaller harp) played by Ahmed Yetman, along with Malik's arco bass and the droning violin of Naim Karacand. The Middle Eastern instruments are absent during "Searchin'," which is sort of a hard bop vehicle featuring trombonist Curtis Fuller and Jerome Richardson on flute, along with the tenor sax. "Takseem (Solo)" omits the jazz instruments; the slowness of the variations of the music and rather piercing vocal make it harder for Western ears to comprehend. Not a release of interest to everyone but, for the most part, this fusion of vastly different styles of music is quite enjoyable; it's obvious from the start that the musicians were enjoying themselves as it was recorded. This long out print LP will be difficult to locate.» (AMG)

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