Beja Power! Electric Soul and Brass from Sudan’s Red Sea Coast
Ostinato Records (41 mins)
A unique instrument is always eye-catching, and Noori’s incredible self-made (literal) fusion of an electric guitar and a tambour lyre certainly grabs the attention. The music he makes with it is even more impressive.
Noori and his band (tenor sax, rhythm guitar, bass and percussion) are Beja, an oppressed minority group from the coastal region of eastern Sudan. Their self-appointed task is to keep the culture of the Beja alive, but their music is no museum-piece. The album’s six instrumental tracks bring to mind raw blues and smoky jazz in equal amounts. The choppy guitar and swirls of saxophone are filled with loping Saharan rhythms and a pentatonic feel that could only be from the Horn of Africa, marking it squarely in the same family as Ethiopian and Somali music. At points it really does sound like a laid-back meeting between Tinariwen and Mulatu Astatke. It all feels like an intimate jam – structured but loose, with space for each musician to stretch out and make the sound their own. The approach creates understated music, in a way that only emphasises its cool.
Beja Power! is a wonderful album by a unique group, showcasing the riches of an underrepresented culture with an effortlessly hip sound – powerful indeed.