Performers for a troupe called Camirata took the stage in Cairo, Egypt. All 12 members are Sudanese. As the music swelled, many in the audience began to cry. Hadia Moussa is a refugee from Sudan. She says the melody reminds her of her home country’s Nuba Mountains.
Sudan is located in Northern Africa. It’s been engulfed by violence since April 2023. That’s when war between the Sudanese military and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces broke out across the land. Many had to leave their homes to escape the fighting. About 4.6 million people have been displaced.
More than 419,000 fled to Egypt.
All of the members of Camirata now live with thousands of refugees there. Founded in 1997, the band members sing in 25 different Sudanese languages. The group gained popularity in Khartoum, the capital of Sudan. But the performers were forced to flee the country after the war began.
Living conditions for those who stayed in Sudan have worsened as the war spread. Famine broke out in Darfur. Militias attacked entire villages and burned them down.
The band members say they struggle to speak with family and friends still in the country. There aren’t many ways to communicate easily with loved ones.
Fatma Farid is a singer and dancer from Kordofan. She moved to Egypt in 2021. “We don't know if we'll return to Sudan again . . . or walk in the same streets,” she says.
Today, the band is determined to preserve traditional Sudanese folk music and dance. The performers use a variety of local instruments like the tanbour (a stringed instrument), the banimbo (a wooden xylophone), and the nuggara drums.
Kawthar Osman has been performing with the band since 1997. She gets emotional when she sings about the Nile River, which forms in Sudan from two upper branches.
“It reminds me of what makes Sudan the way it is,” she says. The war “pushed the band to sing more for peace.”
