Abdel Gadir Salim

Bio

Abdel Gadir Salim is a well-known Sudanese singer to western listeners, being responsible for presenting to the world the traditional and folklore music of the Kurdufan region, in west Sudan. The content of his songs strives to be closer to countryside directness, while the arrangements reflect his studies of both Sudanese and western music.

Born around the 1950s, Salim juggled duties in his careers as international performer and as headmaster of a school in Chad between the mid-1980s and the mid-2000s.In 2005 he recorded a collaboration album called Ceasefire with Sudanese rapper, former child soldier and Christian convert Emmanuel Jal.
Salim represented Sudan at the qualification round of the first ABU Radio Song Festival 2012, but failed to qualify for the final which took place at the KBS Concert Hall in Seoul, South Korea in October 2012.

Abdel Gadir has taken it as his mission to fuse Arabic and African sounds of his country, taking musical scales and motifs from the former and wild percussion from the latter. The lyrics to his songs (he rarely writes the words himself) address any number of themes ranging from traditional love ballads to educational polemics, although he is always careful to avoid antagonizing the Islamic government.

Music

Track artwork
World Circuit Records
Abdel Gadir Salim All-Stars - Umri Ma Bansa (The Merdoum Kings Play Songs of Love)
08:15
SoundCloud
SDKhartoum, Sudan

Contact

Abdel Gadir Salim
Profile added by In-house East Africa on 22 Feb 2016
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