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 الفاتنة نيويورك تستمتع بالموسيقي والغناء السوداني
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By JON PARELES
Published: July 23, 2007
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.
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Nicholas Roberts for The New York Times
Omar Ihsas singing at SummerStage in Central Park on Saturday. The performance was part of the Sudanese Music and Dance Festival.
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Nicholas Roberts for The New York Times
Members of Al Balabil performed with other musicians at the concert. The show was taped for Webcast.
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 ######### 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 videotaped for Webcast and can 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.”
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http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/23/arts/music/23cent.htm...ner=rssyahoo&emc=rss
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