BBC
Can the 'Cuban-Jubans' rebuild South Sudan?
By Lucy Fleming
BBC News, Juba
With Cuban pork roast on the menu, Salsa classes on a Thursday and animated Spanish competing with the Latin beat, De Havana club in the South Sudanese capital Juba feels as though it is on the wrong continent.
“ I think Cuba is unique; they believe in what you are - not where you belong or which religion you practise or the colour of your skin ”
Dr Okony Simon Mori
It is here that a group of former Sudanese exiles, known as the "Cuban-Jubans", gather most nights to share a bottle of whisky and put the world to rights - in Spanish.
Among them are doctors, pharmacists, accountants, engineers and economists.
All were educated in Cuba during Sudan's 21-year civil war and are now regarded as the intellectual elite of the south - one of the world's poorest and least developed regions.
"In Juba we have more than 100 Cuban graduates from different fields, all part of the 600-plus students sent to Cuba for education," says 38-year-old Dr Okony Simon Mori.
He returned to work at Juba's Teaching Hospital in 2007, two years after a peace deal ended the conflict in which some 1.5 million people died.
'Pencils for Kalashnikovs'
He was just 13 when chosen by the newly launched southern rebel group, the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM), to go to Cuba.
"Our late hero [SPLM leader] Dr John Garang told us: 'Now the elder people will take the AK-47 and you guys will take the pencil and the pencil will be your Kalashnikov,'" he recalls.
Dr Okony left his family in 1985 at one of the refugee camps in Ethiopia where thousands of Sudanese had fled the fighting between the army of the Muslim-dominated north and Arab militia on the one side and the SPLM on the other.
He travelled to Cuba aboard a Russian ship and did not see his mother and father again for 18 years - and it was not until he graduated and moved to Canada a decade later that he had any direct contact with them.
"We stayed in a boarding school in a small island called Isla de la Juventud [Island of Youth]. There were 25,000 students from different countries - most of them from Africa and Latin America," Dr Okony says.
"I think Cuba is unique and is a very special place; they believe in what you are - not where you belong or which religion you practise or the colour of your skin.
"The only thing they care about is your well-being and your aptitude. Really, they treated us as their own children."
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Read the entire story HERE.
Showing posts with label sudan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sudan. Show all posts
Monday, March 29, 2010
Thursday, January 25, 2007
"Requiem for Darfur"
NYTimes
January 24, 2007
Music Review | 'Requiem for Darfur'
Making Music Speak for Those Without a Voice
By ANTHONY TOMMASINI
Aspiring classical musicians struggling to find work and established professionals with well-paying positions in major orchestras may seem to live in different worlds. But young or old, student or master, most musicians understand that the art they practice is capable of reaching, and even changing, people profoundly.
It was not surprising that so many musicians, both fledglings and stars, responded when George Mathew, a conductor on the faculty at the Manhattan School of Music, sought instrumentalists and choristers for a performance of Verdi’s Requiem at Carnegie Hall as a benefit for organizations providing relief to victims of the conflict in the Darfur region of western Sudan.
The “Requiem for Darfur” took place on Monday night. Among the participants were Glenn Dicterow, the concertmaster of the New York Philharmonic, serving as concertmaster here; the violinist Eugene Drucker of the Emerson String Quartet; David Soyer, the founding cellist of the Guarneri Quartet; Timothy Cobb, the principal bass player of the Met Orchestra; Joseph Pereira, a percussionist of the New York Philharmonic; and players from the Juilliard School, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra and many other schools and orchestras, even the Berlin Philharmonic.
The host was the actress Mia Farrow, who has visited the Sudan area twice as a goodwill ambassador for Unicef. She spoke of the devastation from the militia attacks and the killing of what is estimated to be about 400,000 people. Nearly 4 million have been displaced or adversely affected.
Photographs that Ms. Farrow took in Sudan were projected on the back wall of the stage: a refugee camp in a deforested desert holding 137,000; a group of children who had not eaten for nine days. Jan Egeland, a former United Nations under-secretary general for humanitarian affairs, spoke next, reminding the audience that Darfur was not a natural disaster (“This is no tsunami”), but a man-made crisis that can be stopped.
Unfortunately, the hall seemed to be about half full. Mr. Mathew had recruited four experienced vocal soloists: the soprano Alexandra Deshorties, the mezzo-soprano Sarah Heltzel, the tenor Scott Piper and the bass Morris D. Robinson. Last year Mr. Mathew presented a comparable benefit at Carnegie Hall, “Beethoven’s Ninth for South Asia.” He seems not yet the kind of skilled technician who can pull together a strong performance of Verdi’s challenging Requiem with limited rehearsal, especially with a disparate group of musicians and choristers, however willing and experienced.
But this was not a night for critical assessments. Verdi’s great work, presented not just as a prayer for the dead but as a call to compassion and purpose, came through affectingly. The apocalyptic Dies Irae (“The day of wrath, that day will dissolve the world in ashes”) is always chilling. But it is hard to describe the effect of hearing this ferocious music while seeing a photograph by Ron Haviv projected on the wall behind the performers: it showed a painting by a Sudanese boy (now a refugee in Chad) of his home village burning, with bodies on the ground and attacking militia on horses.
January 24, 2007
Music Review | 'Requiem for Darfur'
Making Music Speak for Those Without a Voice
By ANTHONY TOMMASINI
Aspiring classical musicians struggling to find work and established professionals with well-paying positions in major orchestras may seem to live in different worlds. But young or old, student or master, most musicians understand that the art they practice is capable of reaching, and even changing, people profoundly.
It was not surprising that so many musicians, both fledglings and stars, responded when George Mathew, a conductor on the faculty at the Manhattan School of Music, sought instrumentalists and choristers for a performance of Verdi’s Requiem at Carnegie Hall as a benefit for organizations providing relief to victims of the conflict in the Darfur region of western Sudan.
The “Requiem for Darfur” took place on Monday night. Among the participants were Glenn Dicterow, the concertmaster of the New York Philharmonic, serving as concertmaster here; the violinist Eugene Drucker of the Emerson String Quartet; David Soyer, the founding cellist of the Guarneri Quartet; Timothy Cobb, the principal bass player of the Met Orchestra; Joseph Pereira, a percussionist of the New York Philharmonic; and players from the Juilliard School, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra and many other schools and orchestras, even the Berlin Philharmonic.
The host was the actress Mia Farrow, who has visited the Sudan area twice as a goodwill ambassador for Unicef. She spoke of the devastation from the militia attacks and the killing of what is estimated to be about 400,000 people. Nearly 4 million have been displaced or adversely affected.
Photographs that Ms. Farrow took in Sudan were projected on the back wall of the stage: a refugee camp in a deforested desert holding 137,000; a group of children who had not eaten for nine days. Jan Egeland, a former United Nations under-secretary general for humanitarian affairs, spoke next, reminding the audience that Darfur was not a natural disaster (“This is no tsunami”), but a man-made crisis that can be stopped.
Unfortunately, the hall seemed to be about half full. Mr. Mathew had recruited four experienced vocal soloists: the soprano Alexandra Deshorties, the mezzo-soprano Sarah Heltzel, the tenor Scott Piper and the bass Morris D. Robinson. Last year Mr. Mathew presented a comparable benefit at Carnegie Hall, “Beethoven’s Ninth for South Asia.” He seems not yet the kind of skilled technician who can pull together a strong performance of Verdi’s challenging Requiem with limited rehearsal, especially with a disparate group of musicians and choristers, however willing and experienced.
But this was not a night for critical assessments. Verdi’s great work, presented not just as a prayer for the dead but as a call to compassion and purpose, came through affectingly. The apocalyptic Dies Irae (“The day of wrath, that day will dissolve the world in ashes”) is always chilling. But it is hard to describe the effect of hearing this ferocious music while seeing a photograph by Ron Haviv projected on the wall behind the performers: it showed a painting by a Sudanese boy (now a refugee in Chad) of his home village burning, with bodies on the ground and attacking militia on horses.
Tuesday, May 30, 2006
Nubian Musician Hamza El Din (1929-2006)
From the Los Angeles Times
OBITUARIES
Hamza El Din, 76; Musician Popularized North Africa's Ancient Traditional Songs
From Times Staff and Wire Reports
May 30, 2006
Hamza El Din, considered the father of Nubian music who helped expose the sounds of his North African homeland to a worldwide audience, has died. He was 76.
El Din died May 22 at a hospital in Berkeley of complications from a gallbladder infection.
A composer and master of the oud, El Din became known to American audiences in the mid-1960s when he performed at the Newport Folk Festival and recorded two albums for the Vanguard label.
His music drew the attention of such musicians as folk singer Joan Baez, the classical Kronos Quartet and the rock band the Grateful Dead. He collaborated with the Kronos Quartet on the album "Pieces of Africa," and played with the Grateful Dead during its show at the Great Pyramids at Giza in 1978.
Other collaborations followed, including one with director Peter Sellars for a version of the Aeschylus play "The Persians" at the Salzburg Festival. Hamza's compositions also were performed by several ballet companies, including the Paris Opera Ballet and San Francisco Ballet.
Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart called El Din's music "mesmerizing, hypnotic and trance-like."
"Hamza taught me about the romancing of the drum," Hart told the San Francisco Chronicle. "His music was very subtle and multilayered."
El Din, who taught ethnomusicology at the University of Washington, Ohio University and University of Texas, lived for a time in Japan to study the biwa, a Japanese lute.
Born in 1929 in the former Nubian town of Wadi Halfa in northern Sudan, El Din was an electrical engineering student at what is now the University of Cairo when he took up the oud, an instrument similar to the lute, and the tar, a single-skinned frame drum from the Upper Nile.
At the news that his homeland would be part of the area to be flooded by Lake Nasser on the completion of the Aswan High Dam, El Din quit his engineering studies and traveled the region by donkey to warn his people of the dislocation that would come about from the dam project.
He also acquired material for many of his songs. He wrote about love, childhood memories, a wedding and the water wheel in his home village.
By playing the oud, not a traditional Nubian instrument, he found ways to expand the boundaries of his native music.
He returned to Cairo to study Arabic music and later studied classical guitar and Western music in Rome at the Academy of Santa Cecilia.
Since the late 1960s, he has lived much of the time in the Bay Area and toured extensively. He offered quietly intense solo concerts and appeared at major festivals throughout the world. He performed dressed in white robes and wore a white turban.
Critics say his most significant recordings were "Escalay: The Water Wheel," released in 1971, and "Eclipse," a 1982 release. His most recent album, "A Wish," was released in 1999.
El Din's survivors include his wife, Nadra.
OBITUARIES
Hamza El Din, 76; Musician Popularized North Africa's Ancient Traditional Songs
From Times Staff and Wire Reports
May 30, 2006
Hamza El Din, considered the father of Nubian music who helped expose the sounds of his North African homeland to a worldwide audience, has died. He was 76.
El Din died May 22 at a hospital in Berkeley of complications from a gallbladder infection.
A composer and master of the oud, El Din became known to American audiences in the mid-1960s when he performed at the Newport Folk Festival and recorded two albums for the Vanguard label.
His music drew the attention of such musicians as folk singer Joan Baez, the classical Kronos Quartet and the rock band the Grateful Dead. He collaborated with the Kronos Quartet on the album "Pieces of Africa," and played with the Grateful Dead during its show at the Great Pyramids at Giza in 1978.
Other collaborations followed, including one with director Peter Sellars for a version of the Aeschylus play "The Persians" at the Salzburg Festival. Hamza's compositions also were performed by several ballet companies, including the Paris Opera Ballet and San Francisco Ballet.
Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart called El Din's music "mesmerizing, hypnotic and trance-like."
"Hamza taught me about the romancing of the drum," Hart told the San Francisco Chronicle. "His music was very subtle and multilayered."
El Din, who taught ethnomusicology at the University of Washington, Ohio University and University of Texas, lived for a time in Japan to study the biwa, a Japanese lute.
Born in 1929 in the former Nubian town of Wadi Halfa in northern Sudan, El Din was an electrical engineering student at what is now the University of Cairo when he took up the oud, an instrument similar to the lute, and the tar, a single-skinned frame drum from the Upper Nile.
At the news that his homeland would be part of the area to be flooded by Lake Nasser on the completion of the Aswan High Dam, El Din quit his engineering studies and traveled the region by donkey to warn his people of the dislocation that would come about from the dam project.
He also acquired material for many of his songs. He wrote about love, childhood memories, a wedding and the water wheel in his home village.
By playing the oud, not a traditional Nubian instrument, he found ways to expand the boundaries of his native music.
He returned to Cairo to study Arabic music and later studied classical guitar and Western music in Rome at the Academy of Santa Cecilia.
Since the late 1960s, he has lived much of the time in the Bay Area and toured extensively. He offered quietly intense solo concerts and appeared at major festivals throughout the world. He performed dressed in white robes and wore a white turban.
Critics say his most significant recordings were "Escalay: The Water Wheel," released in 1971, and "Eclipse," a 1982 release. His most recent album, "A Wish," was released in 1999.
El Din's survivors include his wife, Nadra.
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