Beja Power! Electric Soul & Brass from Sudan's Red Sea Coast by Noori & His Dorpa Band - Ostinato Records [OSTLP012]

Beja Power! Electric Soul & Brass from Sudan's Red Sea Coast

Noori & His Dorpa Band

A 6 track afro soul album (40m 52s) — released June 24th 2022 on Ostinato Records

#soul #afro-soul

A soundtrack of Sudan's revolution and the first ever international release of the Beja sound, performed by Noori and his Dorpa Band, an unheard outfit from Port Sudan, a city on the Red Sea coast in eastern Sudan and the heart of Beja culture.

The Beja community has been on the forefront of political change in Sudan for decades and Noori believes an unleashing of Beja music would form the most potent act of resistance in their quest for justice and a fair share of the gold mined from their land.

Beja Power! is a living archive of the finest, most heartfelt Beja songs—a six-track portal to another time and place, of melodies long forgotten and never before interpreted by an electric and brass-driven ensemble. Few older Beja recordings were produced. Even fewer, if any, remain.

Electric soul, blues, jazz, rock, surf, even hints of country, speak fluently to styles and chords that could be Tuareg, Ethiopian, Peruvian or Thai—all grounded by hypnotic Sudanese grooves, Naji's impeccable, airy tenor sax, and of course, Noori's tambo-guitar, a self-made unique hybrid of an electric guitar and an electric tambour, a four-string instrument found across East Africa.

A truly ancient community, Beja trace their ancestry back millennia. Some say they are among the living descendants of Ancient Egypt and the Kingdom of Kush. They are even depicted in the hieroglyphics. Beja melodies—nostalgic, hopeful and sweet, ambiguous and honest—are thousands of years old. Yet their sounds are also reminiscent of Dick Dale's 1963 "Misirlou" and jazz great Charlie Rouse's 1968 "Meci Bon Dieu". This album could be 6,000 years, 60 years, or 6 months old.

Along with his Dorpa Band, formed in 2006, Noori's instrumental Beja music forms the latest link in an unbroken chain of an inherited, arresting sound that is local as it is global, a gift of a storied past and the exchanges of the well-traveled Red Sea.

Ostinato Records is honored to bring the nearly forgotten Beja sound in all its nostalgia, sweetness, honesty, and power, recorded and mastered to maintain the warmth of Sudan's signature aesthetic, to your sound system.

180g heavyweight vinyl with a 10" x 10" insert.

Tambo guitar fire from the Red Coast. - UNCUT Magazine

Sudan band's music empowers sidelined ethnic group. - AFP / France 24

Musically, the album is a richly mellow experience, with breezy saxophones that bring to mind Mulatu Astatke, snaky guitar/tambo-guitar solos and hypnotic rhythms.” - Record Crates Untied

“A rippling current of hand formed poly-rhythms, bumping bass anchorage and sax player Naji’s scorching horn lines all braid tightly with Noori’s fluent fretwork to create a distinctive Dorpa Band sound.” - Backseat Mafia

“Noori and his band have offered us music of great emotional magic. 10/10 - Truth & Lies

These longform, mesmerizing tracks keep you locked in from beginning to end. - Bandcamp Album of the Day

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