Sub-Saharan African Music Traditions - Sahel and Sudan

Sahel and Sudan

South of the Sahara the Sahel forms a bio-geographic zone of transition between the desert and the Sudanian Savannas, stretching between the Atlantic Ocean and the Red Sea. The Nilotic peoples prominent in southern Sudan, Uganda, Kenya, and northern Tanzania, include the Luo, Dinka, Nuer and Maasai. Many of these have been included in the Eastern region. The Senegambian Fula have migrated as far as Sudan at various times, often speaking Arabic as well as their own language. The Hausa people, who speak a language related to Ancient Egyptian and Biblical Hebrew, have migrated in the opposite direction. The music of Sub-Saharan herders and nomads is heard from west to east. Further west the Berber music of the Tuareg has penetrated to Sub-Saharan countries, while the eastern region has received south Asian and even Austronesian influences by yet another route.

• The Dinka are a mainly agro-pastoral people inhabiting the Bahr el Ghazal region of the Nile basin, Jonglei and parts of southern Kordufan and Upper Nile regions. They number around 1.5 million, about 10% of the population of Sudan.

• The Hausa people are one of the largest ethnic groups in Nigeria, Niger, Sudan and many West and Central African countries. They speak a Chadic language. There are two broad categories of traditional Hausa music; rural folk music and urban court music developed in the Hausa Kingdoms before the Fulani War. Their folk music has played an important part in Nigerian music, contributing elements such as the goje, a one-stringed fiddle.

• The nomadic/pastoral Senegambian Fula people or Tukulor represent 40% of the population of Guinea and have spread to surrounding states and as far as Sudan in the east. In the 19th century they overthrew the Hausa and established the Sokoto Caliphate. The Fula play a variety of traditional instruments including drums, the hoddu or xalam, a plucked skin-covered lute similar to a banjo, and riti or riiti (a one-string bowed instrument similar to a violin), in addition to their vocal music. They also use end-blown bamboo flutes. Instrumentation = fiddle - flute. Other = gawlo.

• The Arabian rebab has found a home among the Nuba peoples.

Early kingdoms were founded in the Lake Chad region. The Kanem Empire, ca. 600 BCE - 1380 CE encompassed much of Chad, Fezzan, east Niger and north-east Nigeria, perhaps founded by the nomadic Zaghawa and then ruled by the Sayfawa Dynasty. The Bornu Empire (1396-1893) was a continuation when the Kanembu founded a new state in Bornu at Ngazargamu. The Kanuri languages spoken by some four million people in Nigeria, Niger, Chad and Cameroon as well as Libya and Sudan are associated with Kanem/Bornu Empire. Flute and drums music. The Kingdom of Baguirmi (also "Sultanate") (1522–1897), was an Islamic kingdom or sultanate that existed southeast of Lake Chad and the Kanem-Bornu Empire. The Ouaddai Empire (1635–1912) (also Wadai) was originally a non-Muslim kingdom, located to the east of Lake Chad that emerged as an offshoot of the Sultanate of Darfur to the northeast of the Baguirmi.

The music of West Africa shares, in its northernmost and westernmost parts, many of these transnational north sub-Saharan ethnic influences. Complex societies existed in the region from about 1500 BCE. The Ghana Empire existed from before c. 830 until c. 1235 in what is now south-east Mauritania and western Mali. The Sosso people took its capital Koumbi Saleh but at the Battle of Kirina (c. 1240) Sundiata Keita's alliance defeated the Sosso and began the Mali Empire, which spread its influence along the Niger River through numerous vassal kingdoms and provinces. The Gao Empire at the eastern Niger bend was powerful in the ninth century CE but later subordinated to Mali until its decline. In 1340 the Songhai people made Gao the capital of a new Songhai Empire.