Sudan Traditional Music Centre

The Sudan Traditional Music Centre is a place that promotes and produces, traditional Sudanese music and instruments. Our visit started with a small introduction concert on a handmade string instruments. They were really enthusiastic and the music and dance show was really full of joy. People joined in the dance - and the community was proud of their work.
Afterwards we entered the centre and saw the amazing collection of traditional instruments from all over Sudan. Strings, drums, and horns in many shapes and forms. All the people at the centre, could play the instruments and gave us an amazing show with music, song and dance. It was a truly amazing experience, to see how the traditional instruments were used and how much they upheld their musical history.
The leader had an enormous collection of data, 16 terrabyte of music/videos from all over Sudan. The size of Sudan and the fact that it is compromised of countless of different tribes with different music traditions, languages and dances. This makes the job at hand seem impossible. But still they were working relentlessly on doing just that, with a minimum of resources and funds. They had received national recognition for their work, and they showed us clips from a documentary broad-casted on national tv.
Dance, music and politics used to be integrated into an whole. Lot of the music and dances were used in several rituals concerning different aspects of life. Both internal politics fx selecting a new leader or going to war, marriage and so on. A lot of the traditional dances involved dressing up as an oxen, and stomping and dancing. The ox was the most important animal in the religion and in the lives of the people in the region and this was reflected in the dance and music.

The centre both produces their own instruments as well as restoration of old ones. They also teach the old techniques to young interested musicians.

Food

Goethe institute in khartoum

During the period i spent in khartoum before the rest of the group arrived, it was very important for me to find a base where we can do our presentations and meet local artists. Unfortunately, my plans for having such a place didn't quietly work due to our busy schedule in khartoum. But if we had a place close to that, i would say it was Goethe institute.

When I first arrived in khartoum, I thought about contacting one of the foreign cultural centers in there, the French, the British or the German. After asking around a bit and talking to some friends I decided to start with Goethe. A friend of mine has started a small project teaching young sudanese how to film and edit and was supported and housed by them.

He, among others encouraged me to contact a young German lady, running the institute in khartoum. Her name was lilli. She spoke Arabic in Egyptian dialect and was very welcoming and nice. She offered me the small library and all her technical staff and stuff. For that, I am truly thankful.

Goethe institute in khartoum has very different goals than in Oslo. It's not just about helping students who are in their way to Germany to study, learning the language and earning the right certifications.

Goethe has widely varied forms of presence and activities. the first institutes in Africa, were opened in 1961 in Togo (Lomé), Cameroon (Yaoundé) and Ghana (Accra); the most recent institute opened in 1995 in South African Johannesburg   Along with the classical tasks of theGoethe-Institut – promoting the German language and a contemporary image of Germany, as well as supporting international cultural cooperation – the work of the Goethe-Institute in Africa aims among other things at providing aesthetic and discursive inputs to the process of modernisation and development in the region. This also includes encouraging innerAfrican exchange and the development of pan-African projects that aim at an artistic reflection of the current political, economic and social problems on the continent.

This aim is to be questioned in my opinion. In Sudan it felt like Goethe was motivating the recent separation of the country into two, south and north even further. We learned during our time in khartoum that Goethe institute in the two capitals, juba and khartoum, belongs to two different regional administrations. While the new southern country belongs to sub-sahara, the northern belongs to north Africa and the middle east. The administrations has different politics and goals and that will drift apart the two cities that not long time ago used to belong to the same country.

This is not strange though, if we look at the western funding for culture in Africa generally. It's very easy to divide Africa into different regions depending on the country or the insituation the funds the cultural work in those regions. The claims that Goethe have in motivating African countries to work together might be true when those countries are funded from the same administration.

However, as an African i can't really complain if culture is my industry. For, whatever those institutions are getting out of Africa for the money they pay supporting cultural development, still it was in Goethe in khartoum i had my first solo show. And it was at the French cultural center i used to hold the hands of my girlfriend. It was at the British council i read about art in English and learned more about both, English and art.

The foreign cultural centers were and are a very important part of the cultural socialization for all the intellectuals in African countries.

I might as well mention that economic and touristic intermeshing between African states and German-speaking countries and the career and business advantages of knowing German stemming from this are a further motivation that is wide-spread. Germany as a place to study is becoming increasingly attractive to academics.

For roughly a year now, people who require a visa so that they can come and live with their spouses in Germany must demonstrate their knowledge of German by taking an Goethe-Institut examination. These people as well begin to learn German before they leave their home country.

That and much more you will find in Goethe in khartoum. While we were there Goethe hosted a forum called Diwan, where you could have poetry nights and open forums about almost everything within the cultural frame. The institute also hosted and supported financially Sudan Film Factory. A place where sudanese youth could learn about documentary film making and show their short movies to each other and to a small local audience.

Desert

A trip on the river Nile

Walking down a red runner carpet laid across a beach of clay, discarded oil barrels, motor engines and another older boat, we embarked on a short trip on the nile. It’s a riverboat of sorts, the kind you book for wedding parties or for outings for business people.

It was a slow morning. The night before we were exposed to a side of Khartoum that’s more or less hidden, but still prevalent. The German Guest House. Alcohol is prohibited in Sudan, so to have a drink you have to visit one of the local establishments that smuggles in alcohol and sells it off (with huge profits). The place itself was somewhere in between a tacky holiday resort and a never ending sleazy hotel party. 

I know I’m supposed to write about the boat trip on the nile, but it’s important to describe The German Guest House, as the experience definitely set the tone for the morning on the Nile.

In our program, the boat trip on the Nile read as follows: “10:00 trip by boat on the river Nile and meeting with local artist.”

The previous day we had our self-presentations at the Goethe Institute in Khartoum and a whopping 4 people showed up for this event. Of these four people, three of them came along for our boat trip. Sokohn from South Sudan, Ibrahim from Khartoum and a guy whose name I can’t recall. He wore a huge rastafari-esque hat, and a couple of medallions with pictures of Bob Marley hung from his neck.

Along for our trip was also our friend/spy from the Sudanese government, a woman I presume was his wife and fourteen tired art students.

It was a nice morning. The boat sets off at a leisurely tempo and soon we pass under a noteworthy bridge, brought here by the British from India during British rule. Other sights include different water pumping systems, water towers and some fancy houses. Being interested in heavy industry and pipes, I learn the Arabic word for “pipes” as we pass by some of them. Later I learn that this word is also used to describe someone who does nefarious deeds. The word is now forgotten.

Most of our gang sit on the upper deck and, well, chill out. Our “meeting with local artist” seems to be on hold. After some time, a few people grew restless and gravitate downstairs to a table in the shadows by the bow of the boat. Of these people there are three local artists (actually two local artists and one guy working at the Goethe Institute) and three of us. A meeting of sorts takes place.

The conversation goes back and forth via Ibrahim, the only one who spoke any English. Since my knowledge of Arabic was limited to words like “pipes”, “art”, “art student” and “you are crazy!”, we had to go by English. It was a slow and pleasant conversation - probably influenced by the motion and atmosphere of our boat.

We talked about what they did in Khartoum, what they did at the Goethe Institute and what kind of art scene existed in Khartoum. Not surprisingly, it turns out to be incredibly tiny. Sokohn apparently is also a director of theatre plays as well as a draughtsman. But he rarely gets to put up his plays anywhere. He makes a drawing for me while we sit there. A drawing of Khartoum with some seemingly cryptic numbers to one of the sides.

For a short while we get onto the topic of my art, and Sokohn makes the following judgment relayed via Ibrahim: “I think your art is very good, but if you made it here in Sudan - people would say you were crazy!” Suddenly my Arabic seemed sufficient after all. 

Pretty pleased with this review, I go to eat some lunch with our friendly Sudanese Government spy who I reckon likes me because he can pronounce my name as “Osman” after Osman I, the first ruler of the Ottoman Empire. How can I resist such an appealing moniker? “Osman!” he says and smiles broadly as he pulls up a chair for me. There the conversation stops, as his English skills are practically non-existent - a doubtful asset for a spy.

After lunch we have our picture taken together, and it’s a nice moment. I wonder what will become of this photograph. Maybe he will show it to his superiors and say “look at this crazy white man! He said his name was Osman!” Or maybe it will just land in some indistinct folder of pictures quizzically entitled “Norwegian art students on study trip to Sudan”.

The tomb of Sheikkh Hamad El Nil




At the outskirts of Omdurman, after riding through flocks of goats, out to the middle of a dusty and not very well kept graveyard, we found a large crowd chanting and dancing in front of Sheikh Hamad El Nil's tomb. He was, according to a man I met inside the tomb, the great-(...)-great-grandson of Mohammad as well as a muslim propagator and founder of the Quadiri Sufi order in Sudan. In the tomb, his body is presumably lying in a large box, which definitively is covered with green cloth and surrounded by steel bars. The construction covers most of the floor space of the otherwise naked tomb. Around the steel bars devotees are praying while followers of the local Quadiri order celebrate the friday outside and in the neighboring building. The main attraction seem to be outside, were hundreds of devotees have gathered. In the middle of the large crowd there is a large, more or less open circle where the initiated men are moving in the same direction as the muslims do around the Kaaba in Mecca.The women were keeping themselves outside of the circle. Music was intensely being broadcast on the PA with drums and melodic recitals. In the circle there is more chanting. Some are spinning around or jumping, others are waving incense burners while most seems to be wandering around in a daze. The Zikr (recital) we are witnessing looks very different to the ordered dancing of the more well known swirling dervishes of the Merlevi order in Turkey. The Quadiris of Omdurman are often wearing dresses made of a patchwork and letting their hair grow into dreadlocks to show that they do not care about their outer appearance. The sermon looks very disorganized, but apparently they all have different roles to perform to achieve the groups ecstatic closeness to god. The music and chanting is more rhythm based than the melodic Merlevi's music, and the chanting consisted of rhythmically repeating some of the names of Allah until the sun set. We were blessed with incense and taken by the energy, but unfortunately they did not butcher any camels to feed the poor this friday. Around the circle of worship there was a small market where one could buy religious literature, pictures of holy men and relevant trinkets while the ad-hoc cafe's probably mainly served the curious crowd that gathered for the spectacle or practice their english with the tourists.


Sufism or Tasawwuf is the esoteric path of Islam, where closeness to Allah is achieved through daily ascetisism as well as repetitive dance and/or chanting of for example, the 99 names of God. To become a Sufi one starts with the Islamic law, which adheres to exoteric practices as Mohammed practiced them, and initiation into the more esoteric tariqa (way or path) of one's Sufi order.



The Quadiri Sufi order got its name from its founding father, Syed Abdul Quader gilani Al Amoli. He came from Mazandaran in Iran, where he was the leader of a madrasa. The order spread widely in the muslim world, and he has followers in Sudan as well. The different manifestations of the order seems to be quite diverging due to the fact that they do not have a centralized leadership, and the local leaders may adhere to local customs or other aspects of Islam that they find important.