King of Sudanese jazz Sharhabil Ahmed honoured with compilation

Released by German record label Habibi Funk, the seven-track compilation features music spanning Ahmed's career, alongside interviews and archival photographs.

Born in 1935 and launching into music in the 1960s, Ahmed set out to modernise Sudanese music with Western instrumentation and influences. The label, which is headed by Jannis Stürtz, describes Ahmed's music as "a unique combination of surf rock, funk, Congolese music and East African harmonies."

"In Europe, the rhythms of swing and tango were being replaced by jazz, samba, and rock and roll. We were influenced by this rejuvenation in Sudan, too," Sharhabil said.

"I started by learning to play the oud and traditional Sudanese music and got a diploma from the music institute of Khartoum University. But my ambition was to develop something new. For this, the guitar seemed like the best instrument. Western instruments can approximate the scales of Sudanese music very well. After all, a lot of Western music is originally from Africa."

Stürtz was introduced to Ahmed's son by Sudanese hip hop artist Zen-Zin in Germany in 2014. In 2017, Stürtz and his team visited Ahmed, who was 80 years old at the time, at his home near Khartoum. They were able to find and clean up several tapes for a full compilation.

"Finding Sharhabil's music in good quality to be used as the source for this reissue was a particularly difficult task," the label said. "It was easy to get hold of a lot of songs via the internet, but all of them were of poor quality. It took years to find a good source of the material."

Ahmed's first release on Habibi Funk was the song 'Argos Farfish', which was part of the label's first compilation titled Habibi Funk: An Eclectic Selection of Music from the Arab World, which was issued in December 2017.

Ahmed attained the 'King of Sudanese Jazz' title after winning a jazz music competition in the early 1970s.

Pre-order The King of Sudanese Jazz here.