Beja Music

Beja music is the song tradition of the Beja people of Sudan's Red Sea hills and the port of Port Sudan, built on the basankoob, a five-stringed lyre, and on ballads that carry the history, genealogy and wit of a pastoralist people. Its melodies follow scale patterns distinct from the pentatonic mainstream of Sudanese music, and its texts, sung in the Beja language, serve as the community's living archive. Long preserved by master singers and long marginalised by Khartoum, it reached records through 1990s field recordings, and a generation later through *Noori*, whose electrified tambo-guitar and *Dorpa Band* reframed the ancient repertoire as groove music.