24214. A Short History of Sudanese
Popular Music
ahmad sikainGa
In the literature on the rise of modern Sudan, there is a dominance of
political analysis and a comparative absence of social and cultural history.
Topics such as popular culture, music, dance and clothing have received
scant attention from historians. These subjects have mostly been left to
anthropologists and others whose research has been in rural areas. Yet
such activities are central to the emergence of a common popular culture
in the urban centres of the country. This is a culture that springs from
the lives of marginal groups, of manual workers, peasants, slaves and
women, and from the merging of a great diversity of indigenous and
external influences.
This chapter examines the role of distinct styles of music, singing, and
dance in the shaping of contemporary Sudanese urban cultural expres-
sion. Hybridized and cosmopolitan, the popular arts that have developed
in the cities of Sudan challenge the binary terms conventionally used to
describe Sudanese national culture: the idea of an Arab Muslim north
versus an African and Christian or non-Muslim south. As the recent
wars in Darfur and in Eastern Sudan have clearly shown, the north is
not a monolithic entity, but a complex region inhabited by a multitude
of ethnic and linguistic groups, with different cultural traditions. The
popular culture that is still emerging from the meeting of these groups
is central to the ongoing debate on Sudanese identity and the question
of the future of that identity.
The musical traditions of modern Sudan are the product of a long
history of migration, intermarriage, miscegenation and cultural hybrid-
The Sudan Handbook, edited by John Ryle, Justin Willis, Suliman Baldo and Jok Madut Jok. © 2011 Rift Valley Institute and contributors ization. To the indigenous cultures of Nubian peoples in the north, the
(www.riftvalley.net).