Far from Cairo’s affluent neighborhoods, children’s laughter echoes through a narrow street as they kick a ball, their swift feet lifting dust clouds. The borders of their playground are defined by closely huddled buildings with walls adorned as canvases for hand-painted, colorful patterns that tell the stories of their residents’ creativity.
Careful not to disturb the game, I walk close to the buildings, but my path is blocked by a rawhide leather drying on the ground in the searing Cairo sun. I have reached the workshop. A man in his 50s, dressed in a freshly ironed white Jalabiya (a loose-fitting, traditional garment from the Nile Valley), greets me with a broad smile and promptly offers me a drink as he invites me inside.
The 12-square-meter workshop is brimming with treasures far greater than its modest size suggests. It is a haven of Dafallah Al-Haj Ali Mustafa (often referred to as Dafallah Al-Haj), a Sudanese researcher and a leading figure in traditional Sudanese music.
It doesn’t take long to notice the highlights of Al-Haj’s life enclosed in this newly acquired Cairo workshop. Pieces of wood and leather, a variety of tools, lie across the floor and on the shelves. Unfinished instruments await the master’s attention. Some decorate the walls alongside a few photographs, which are reminders of Al-Haj’s decades of work in his home country.
Al-Haj’s remarkable contributions to Sudan’s cultural map are profound and far-reaching. An academic, a musician, and a researcher, he dedicated his life to promoting Sudan’s heritage music, becoming the first man to study and document his country’s cultural wealth. The founder of the Sudanese Center for Traditional Music and the Museum housed within its walls, is home to hundreds of instruments, which he collected or crafted himself. As a performer and supporter of many traditional bands, Al-Haj spent his life raising awareness of his country’s music.

His deep passion for knowledge and research helped him overcome countless obstacles, earning him recognition in Sudan and abroad. However, his hopes for a brighter future were dashed as the war erupted in Khartoum in April 2023, forcing him to join the Sudanese diaspora in Cairo, leaving much of his life and work behind.
“It was Ramadan [month of fasting for Muslims]… 15 April… we woke up to the sound of shootings,” Al-Haj recalls the fighting between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) under Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan, and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) under Hemedti, a Janjaweed (Arab nomad militia group) leader.
“We thought the situation would calm in a week or two, but soon realized the war would continue. Many families began heading to Egypt. During the first month, I couldn’t even access the Centre, as militias had taken over the streets and buildings. It took time before I could secretly retrieve my passport and the hard drives containing years of research. As for the instruments, unfortunately, they were all looted or destroyed. I realized that some were used as wood for fire to cook on. The workshops were also destroyed, and the tools and the machines were looted,” he says, describing the desecration of decades of his collection and hard work.
“I took my family, and we came to Cairo. Here, I am trying to rebuild whatever I can.”
In the beginning, there was Um Kiki
Dafallah Al-Haj was born and spent his whole life in Omdurman, a city on the west bank of the River Nile, northwest of the capital city of Khartoum.
“My father worked in livestock trading. He would travel a lot, all across Sudan. When I was a young boy, he often took me with him. Instead of trade, those travels attracted me to music and traditional performances, which I would attend in many cities and villages we visited,” Al-Haj shares, adding that his interest in music was supported by his mother’s family, which boasts several singers and instrumentalists.
At 14, Al-Haj began playing the oud and soon joined traditional ensembles as a musician and singer. While still in middle school, his travels took him to southern Kordofan, 500 km from Khartoum, where he bought his first um kiki, a one-stringed instrument with a body made from a gourd covered with goatskin. “I got it from a musician of the Baggara tribe,” he recalls his visit to the cattle nomads of southwest Sudan in 1989.

Um kiki became the first item in a large collection of more than 150 instruments from rural and urban areas, which he was yet to purchase or receive as gifts from their original owners. “I was mesmerized by those instruments. I would bring each of them home and learn how to play it.”
As if awakened from distant memories, he swiftly adds, “I would perform a lot, enter music and singing competitions; I won many of them.”
One of the major shifts came in 1994, when Al-Haj enrolled at Sudan University, College of Music and Drama. “I studied Western classical music curriculum, which is so distant from our traditional Sudanese music. I played concertos, sonatas,” he recalls. But his course of studies was often interrupted by the policies imposed by Sudan’s Islamic rules under Omar Al-Bashir.
“The 1990s were especially challenging, with the regime frequently shutting down art academies for months at a time. It took me eight years to graduate instead of five.” During this period, Al-Haj also pursued other academic interests, earning a Diploma in English Translation from the Faculty of Arts at Omdurman Ahlia University.
Despite the challenging times, his passion for Sudanese folklore and his growing collection of instruments only deepened. “While still in the music department, I decided to classify the instruments, which pushed me to learn more.” In 2001, driven by a thirst for knowledge, he pursued a master’s degree at the Institute of African and Asian Studies, University of Khartoum.
In Al-Haj’s journeys, countless threads intertwine; they are all embedded in Sudan’s musical heritage, with his most transformative decade starting with the dusk of the 1990s.
In 1997, Al-Haj established his band, Camerata Ensemble, “a name I drew from the word ‘camarades’. We were a group of friends, all academics, who enjoyed playing together. We soon started performing at many festivals across Sudan and outside the country. Those were great times,” he recalls.
Al-Haj also joined the National Band for Folk Instruments, an ensemble operating under the Ministry of Culture. ” [It] followed the state’s vision of Sudan’s heritage,” Al-Haj comments, adding to this a long list of other bands he has been part of, going as far as creating instruments for many of them.
Sudan’s musical wealth
However, playing the traditional instruments wasn’t enough for him. He began crafting them, breathing life into wood, animal hides, and strings to create instruments that echoed the soul of Sudan. To this day, his creations have found homes in various institutions, including the Sudanese Life Documentation Centre, traditional bands, and even international organizations. Between 1996 and 2010, Al-Haj crafted over 300 instruments, giving life to rhythms and melodies that carry Sudan’s stories across the country and beyond its borders.
“I then decided to form an entity that would be a beacon preserving Sudanese heritage,” he points to the Sudanese Centre for Traditional Music, established in 1997 and formally registered in 2009. The Centre concentrated on building a comprehensive database of Sudanese music, compiling recordings, videos, and photographs, while also providing access to academic research and studies. It organized workshops and training sessions, supported traditional music bands, and became the home of the Camerata Ensemble.

Al-Haj met with representatives from various musical communities to document and classify Sudan’s diverse musical heritage. Collaborating with other academics, he focused on the hosted musicians’ performance techniques, rhythms, melodies, and cultural nuances to create a comprehensive map of Sudanese music.
“We’ve done a tremendous amount of research, but I still see it as just a drop in the ocean. The wealth of Sudan’s music is boundless.” Indeed, in a country with more than 500 ethnic groups and an estimated 114 indigenous languages, the musical representations of those cultures are beyond our comprehension.
The Center stands also as home to The Traditional Sudanese Musical Instruments Museum, the only museum in Sudan dedicated solely to classical folk instruments. In 2017, the museum gained membership in the International Council of Museums (ICOM).
Instruments that strike a chord
Al-Haj’s collection of original instruments, some almost a century old, and dozens of those he crafted have finally found their perfect home where each could tell stories of Sudanese heritage and its complex cultural history.
And as it turns out, Al-Haj also enjoys talking about the instruments as if they were his children.
In his Cairo workshop, as he concentrates on the piece of wood in his hand, he seems to ignore the discomfort of the stool beneath him, his thoughts likely on the chisel he’ll soon use to carve yet another instrument. Probably distracted by our conversation, he lifts his eyes and points to the cowhide at the entry to his workshop and says, “That’s a good piece. It will be ready in a few days. I might use it for a new naggarah [nugara],” believed to be Sudan’s oldest instrument, dating back thousands of years.
This highly popular Sudanese drum-like instrument is made from hollowed tree trunks with skins stretched over both ends. “It has a strong African spiritual significance. Depending on its use in various rituals, manufacturing processes of naggarah may differ,” he explains, pointing to a semi-finished piece on the workshop’s shelf.
His mind then travels to the museum in Sudan. “We had a few kitas,” he mentions an instrument that originates from the Borno and Falata tribes of northern Nigeria that made its way to Sudan. “Kita is played by using a reed placed in the mouth while the player blows air into it, creating continuous sound.”
Al-Haj adds that the museum was also home to a variety of tambours, and string instruments with some having historical roots that go all the way to the lyre of Greek mythology. Having an integral role in Sudanese culture, tambours carry different names across the country, depending on their usage in various cultural practices. Al-Haj mentions basinco from east Sudan, tom from south Sudan, um bari bari from north Kordofan, “among many others we had in the museum.”
“Look at this one,” Al-Haj points to an instrument leaning against the workshop’s wall. “This is a Nubian kissar [kissir], a kind of tambour, but more like the lyres you find on walls of Ancient Egyptian temples. It has five strings, and is made from pine wood,” and he shows the small decorative engravings on the instrument. “Besides its musical function, the instrument deserves to be beautiful. I always take care of those details,” Al-Haj delights in his kissar that is yet to be perfected.

Before I can fully absorb the multicultural roots and intricate details Al-Haj shares about each instrument, he points to a large photo on the wall. In the image, a row of men stand with long, horn-like instruments before an audience.
“They play traditional wazza, an instrument originally linked to the weeks of harvest,” Al-Haj explains a particular musical practice known to ethnic Funj people in Sudan’s south.
“Each wazza produces one tone, so we need 13 men for a full performance. To create a melodic line, they blow wazza in a specific order. It is a very difficult instrument, demanding high coordination between the players.” Al-Haj then adds that the photo is from one of the international festivals that he participated in with the musicians.
It is obvious that at the core of Al-Haj’s creative practice are his instruments. The academic journey he pursued was always aimed at deepening his understanding of their functions, the people behind them, the traditions they are tied to, and the countless cultural and social connotations they carry.
Sharing knowledge
Throughout his life, he shared his knowledge abundantly. I dare to guess that he does it with the same passion as his stories filling the small Cairo workshop.
In 2007, Al-Haj became an adjunct professor at the College of Music and Drama at Sudan University, besides teaching music in various places, including the Sudanese-Turkish School in Khartoum, and spent much time working with children. Throughout his practice, he trained members of different local communities to perform dramatic and musical works. He prepared dozens of programmes about music for Sudanese television, with one of the most popular being Muzameer (2009-2010), a thirty-episode programme presenting documentary films about Sudanese culture in various forms, using traditional music and accompanying rituals as an entry point to learning about these communities.
Al-Haj could use his knowledge in social and humanitarian endeavors such as using music in training children to avoid violence and spread a culture of peace (in displaced persons camps in Mayo, Jebel Aulia, and Wad Al-Bashir, etc)
As he recalls the trajectory of his life, many threads intertwine. All seems to be encapsulated in his mind as he tries to find his way into a new Cairo-based reality. Al-Haj is not defeated, on the contrary, he is working on rebuilding the musical wealth, sculpting his children-instruments one at a time.
Little more than a year into his stay in Egypt, he has already organized a number of concerts presenting Sudanese folklore through the country’s diaspora living in Cairo. Meanwhile, his new self-crafted instruments slowly make their way to the hands of the performers.
An active member of the local Sudanese community, he holds workshops and lectures, as well as trains new cadres of instrument makers. He continues to expand his network, sharing knowledge and expertise with wider audiences. “I am doing the best I can, here, in Cairo. It is not always easy, but I will keep working and promoting our heritage wherever I go.”
He underlines, however, that his stay in Egypt is “temporary.” Longing for his home he concludes by saying, “I will return to Sudan the moment the war ends. We have a lot to rebuild.”