"Had Jannis Stuertz listened to the moldy reels of audiotape just once before digitizing them, the recorded music of Kamal Keila—who is often referred to as Sudan’s James Brown, and one of the godfathers of a nearly forgotten strain of Sudanese jazz—might have been lost forever. Though Stuertz didn’t know it when he first laid eyes on them, the tape reels contained Kamal Keila’s Muslims and Christians, one of the only recorded Sudanese jazz albums in existence. Built on the synthesis of early American rock ‘n’ roll and traditional Sudanese rhythms, instrumentation, and arrangements, Sudanese jazz is an entirely unique and unequivocally African musical innovation. Despite its name, the genre bears little sonic resemblance to what we typically call 'jazz' in the West. Rather, the music that poured out of clubs in Omdurman and Khartoum throughout the ‘60s, ‘70s, and early ‘80s, was closer to what it might sound like if Fela Kuti covered a Bill Haley song for the soundtrack of a Quentin Tarantino film. Timely blasts of horns are reminiscent of funk; guitar strings bent to their breaking point evoke the blues; familiar and foreign rhythms blur into a versatile groove that’s sometimes reggae, sometimes rock, and always addictive, drenched in the joie de vivre of earnest originality. ..."
Bandcamp (Audio)
Soundcloud: Kamal Keila - Taban Ahwak (Release coming soon), Muslims And Christians
Habibi Funk 008: Muslims and Christians (Audio)
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