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Setona

Setona (ستونة) was born in Khartoum into a family coming from the Sudanese province of Kordofan. Starting a career as professional singer and musician was a challenge for Setona as a young woman even though one of her uncles was the founder of a so called “jazz band” in the fifties. But acting as a female musician in the public has never lost its connotation of indecency in Sudanesean society. Setona lived with her family in the Sudanese capital Khartoum in a quarter inhabitating people from different Central African countries as Nigeria, Zaire, Ethiopia and people from the southern parts of Sudan. Together with her husband Ahmed, who has been working as a teacher and collecting music all over the vast country, she draws from a broad spectrum of African rhythms and melodies. In her music Setona combines with ease influences of all those peoples living alongside the tarig as-sudan as an unique crossroad of cultures. One will find musical influences from areas being as too dispersed as East Africa (Taraab), Zaire (Soukous), Ghana (Highlife), Nigeria (JuJu, Fuji) and Sierra Leone (Palmwine music) and furthermore Uganda, Ethiopia, Tchad, Senegal, Nubia, Egypt and and and … - apparently pan African music and truely Sudanese at the same time.