Friday, 1 May 2026

May 1: Sulaf

I had an email from Real World Records earlier this week talking about a new signing of Sulaf.
Sulaf is from the Sudan.


Description:

“I gathered my belongings into a small bag, not shedding many tears as no one expected what would happen. No one foresaw all this separation ...”

Sulaf transforms her refugee exile into ABA — an album blending Nubian roots with modern soundscapes in collaboration with producer Maxime Kosinetz (Imarhan, Tinariwen). 

Drawing on the Sufi poetry of her great-grandfather, she captures loss, identity, and resilience, carrying Sudan’s spirit across borders with haunting power and emotional depth.

Sulaf will introduce material from the album for the first time to audiences across Europe as the opening act on select shows of desert-blues supergroup Tinariwen’s current tour. 

She appears as a featured guest vocalist on their new album Hoggar.

More on Tinariwen in a separate post.

With ABA, Sulaf emerges as a vital new voice — “a vessel for the songs of the women of Sudan”, as she puts it — creating music that speaks both to deep-rooted tradition and a bold, contemporary sonic future.

Here's the first track from the album:

May 1: A world of music in May

During May, I shall be focussing a little on different countries (with some small diversions for important dates and other things) and this will continue in other months.

Search 'TOP 50' on Spotify to find the various global charts as they stand.


The posts will introduce a few musical acts from each country which are in my collection or which I used to have in my collection or who I have seen in concert.

There used to be an excellent map which you could access which was created from Gracenote data. This was used to add the song details to files which were ripped from CDs into iTunes and similar places.

Spotify does allow you to search the globe and see what is in the charts in a number of different countries. 

There is usually quite a bit of overlap in the charts between countries and a useful cultural globalisation idea that I used to have in a lesson was to look at the top 10 and see which musical acts were present in more than one country.