Sudanese Music: A Loud Voice silenced by an Inconvenient Ideology - A Historical Review1

Abstract

Background: This paper sweeps through the last one and half millennium trying to trace the musical genres of the Sudan as being African in origin and how the process of lslamization and Arabization has affected it. The advent of Christianity can roughly be said to have begun around the 6th century AD. While the processes of lslamization and Arabization can also be marked with the establishment of the Black Sultanate of the Funj in 1505 AD.