Sudanese Song

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This page highlights the development of the Sudanese songs through decades.

Article word count 1394

By – Khalid Osman

Rich lyrics and musical environment in Sudan have streamlined the Sudanese songs with some stand-alone styles.

Here below is a lecture on this topic, which I have covered a while back ago, when I was a journalist in one of the most popular and socialist Kuwaiti newspapers.

People sang in Sudan before the development of TV shows, wireless technologies and cables development throughout the planet.

I found this article in my archives here, while I was searching for such topic I wrote earlier in the beginning of the eightieth.

I found press coverage to a lecture on this topic I published at that time. I believe that I have forgotten so many topics I wrote in articles, reportages and interviews through my professional life. I have lost so many of these journalistic activities during my long escape from the dictatorship domination in Sudan throughout its modern history.

The archives search I conducted resulted on this page. I hope it is interesting topic to read and know something about the development of this kind of the Sudanese arts.

I found that it is difficult to translate some local terms in the Sudanese language into English, so I just worded them in English letters. I herein, gave them more highlights to explain what they mean.

When the "Sudanese Song" began traditionally, it began with that local kind of songs called "Haqiba song" in which the Arabic term means "Bag". So, it is the "Bag's song" and it is still sung. In such public terms in the Sudanese Arabic language, people signalize the single word meaning the plural. However, they sometimes say "Haqiba songs". People hang with this song because it is intimate and pure and it represents a world of virginity, where virginity is the method and the ethic that develops the Sudanese moralities decades after decades. Then from the same kind of that Sudanese song came the "Tom Tom" songs, which performs with a different rhythm in the "Bag's Songs".

Sudanese poet and lecturer in Sanaa University Mubarak Hassan Al Khalifa said, "The - Sudanese Song - has been evolved, but we're still to say, there're songs for the bridegroom, the bride and other songs for different seasons and occasions." Thus, spoke the Doctor in one of his public lectures in Kuwait.

The Sudanese poet Professor Hassan Mubarak Al Khalifa presented a lecture on the evolution of Sudanese songs in the "General Federation of Trade Unions of Kuwait" on October 1983. The lecturer highlighted the terms, methods and themes of the Sudanese songs. He analyzed the socio-political impact of the Sudanese song and its reflection on the local milieu.

He explained how the old Sudanese song or the "Bag's Songs" transformed to modernity. The lecturer presented at the same time excerpts of some of them, capturing the attention of the audience and tidily focusing them on the history of the Sudanese song, its broadcast, transcendence, events and occasions.

Presenting his theses, the lecturer answered first the question of why the Sudanese song called the "Bag's Songs" starting from 1920s and so far. He stated that had happened in a radio program when the programmers recorded the names of the songs on the papers and mixed them in a bag to withdraw from these papers whenever they wanted to present a song.

The records and pictures of various types and methods of the Sudanese songs presented distinctive singing, which has been associated with productivity factors, which in turn has contributed to such methods.

Sudanese tutor Mubarak spoke about number of examples of this song. He included:

• ... singing of women on some social or individual activities while pounding grain during coffee or during agricultural activities;
  
• ... singing of mourners on some social mourning events, laminating their lost;
  
• ... singing of boatmen on board while they are working on boats fishing or sailing;
  
• ... singing of porters or even their melody or ecstatic regular rhythm which comes in musical murmurs while they are carrying hard weights or shouting the word "Helahub" so many times to encourage each other.

Great-Awarded Sudanese Songs:

He said that some "Bag's Songs" records prove that the old elaborated Sudanese song still emphasizes survival, although some may get tide to modernity. In fact, most of those "Bag's Songs" has gone under development with the use of the modern musical instruments instead of the old traditional musical instruments.

The lecturer explained that there are two leads through the traditional way of a song and those kinds performed on rapid pace or lightweight and slow type. He pointed out that, factors of innovation in traditional dance style and the emergence of modern dancing or rapid turn has led to such a division in the wake witnessed of the Sudanese song in the 1940s, which has distinguished itself as a result of the rapid development of political shifts.

He explained that those methods above include the awarded "Tom Tom" song, which acquired its name from the rhythm of the drums used in such song, in addition to other types of songs known as "sera" songs. Those kinds of songs are actually "biography" songs praising the bride, or the bridegroom while accompanying the bridegroom in a very intimate social march while singing to his bride's house.

He said that, since the bridegroom has his songs in his day, the bride has also songs in her day called "songs of the bride". I think (in some events, some families do not allow the bride to do those dances in public because they are sexier than the forbidden dance "Lampada".

In the "neighbourhood" of so many big towns, there is another kind of singing in the rural districts known as couplet, "Addobait" in Arabic, and that kind is more poetic. While it is actually lyrics done by semi-nomads during pasture driving their animals, it runs sometimes, as I can see, in rivalry poetic and advances process. It includes poetry, called "Heda". This kind adds musical tones to lyrics while nomads are pasturing or travelling with their animals. The "Heda" is primary sang to make the camels hurry during mass march for grass or trade immigration. These kinds of songs actually inherited from the deep Arabic lyrics in its old style. Each of these methods images craft in vibrant social relations and humanitarian amalgamation and solidarity. (Author)

Political song:

Another genre of the Sudanese Song is the "National Song". The lecturer pointed to records on national song coverage from the 1920s period, when the song "Among the Ribs of the Dearest Homeland" sprang to touch the national heart by storm. This national Sudanese song has become a norm and given a strong notion, which identifies the Sudanese political struggle during a sensitive period of Sudan history. That struggle which began popular by naturally socialist people to be inherited by landlords or military adventurers. (Author).

"In the heart, sponsored by care among the ribs of the dear nation" hides good and lovely wording between its lyrics, in the period following the Sudanese political revolution of the year 1924. Then starting from this period in the national political struggle, some national songs followed the national theme. Those themes unleashed the national feelings from fear and enriched it by logic, rationality and credibility while dealing with two kinds of imperialists, one was international and the other was regional (Author).

The lecturer spoke at this point, about how the national song has built solidarity with other revolutions. He pointed some national songs that responded to the global liberation movements. Among these Sudanese national songs, he said some called for unity with Egypt, and sang lyrics against "Hitler" and "Mussolini". Those national songs embodied the spirit of the people and all the hope and ambitions to gain unity, justice, peace and freedom.

In addition to a multitude of factors and circumstances during the national struggle, the lecturer considers these songs as national seeds of modern political struggle.

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