Rasha (Sudan/Spain)

Her concerts come alive with her gentle timbres: Rasha’s voices floats, sometimes lyrically, sometimes in Oriental scat singing, above the lute, tambourine, and darbuka drums, as well as Western strings, saxophone, and guitar. Songs in the Merdoum style, which was brought to Sudan by Arabian nomads, alternate with Sudanese variations on rumba and reggae.

Rasha’s love of experimentation can be compared with that of Radio Tarifa, the deliberately eclectic band with which she has been working since emigrating from Khartoum to Spain. She has already recorded CDs with Maria Salgado on the Spanish side and Seydu from Sierra Leone on the African side: a balancing act between continents. Radio 1 enthusiastically called it “lovely stuff.”