Nubian Music

Nubian music is the traditional and popular music of the Nubian people of southern Egypt and northern Sudan, a culture displaced and dispersed by the flooding of Nubia behind the Aswan High Dam in the 1960s. Its sound joins Arabic and Nilotic elements: oud and tambour (the Nubian lyre) accompany singing in the Nubian languages (Kenzi and Dongolawi) and in Arabic, in pentatonic melodies of notable rhythmic suppleness, framed by frame drums and handclaps. Figures such as oud master *Hamza El Din* and bandleader *Ali Hassan Kuban* carried the repertory from village celebration to international stages, where it became an emblem of Nubian identity in exile.