Aghani El Banat: The Soundtrack to an Ancient Nubian Rite of Passage
Despite Sudan’s ongoing war, weddings have resumed and are preserving millennia-old traditions while giving many women a lifeline for entrepreneurship.
A jirtig being celebrated at a home in Port Sudan.by Hannah Wolny
To the steady rhythm of a dalooka drum, a woman sings about a handsome groom meeting his beautiful bride tonight. In the name of God, bismillah, may they have a blessed marriage.
The scents of sandalwood, musk, and oud waft into the space, announcing the bride’s arrival. She enters, wrapped in a red toub and adorned with golden jewelry. Head modestly hidden under a qarmasis, a blue, red, and golden checkered cloth, she walks side by side with the groom, long black hair dangling all the way to her hips, flowing left and right with the music’s tom tom rhythm.
This genre of music is called Aghani El Banat, girls’ songs. They are performed at celebrations and gatherings like circumcisions, funerals of young men, or, in most cases, the jirtig, an ancient Nubian wedding ceremony.
Aghani El Jirtig (jirtig songs) are the wedding’s musical foundation. Passed down orally, they are traditionally performed by the ghanaya, a woman who plays the dalooka, a goblet-shaped drum made from clay and stretched animal skin, which originated in the Darfur region.
It’s difficult to trace each song’s origins, but they’re all composed by and for women. They praise the prophet and address themes of love and relationships, playing with explicit flirtation and subtle sexual innuendos.
In Sudan’s conservative and classist context, Aghani El Banat and those who perform them have often been stigmatized. It’s an art form of the working classes, popularized by formerly enslaved women. Despite the resistance to these women expressing their femininity freely and self-defining their roles in society, their songs remain beloved and impossible to suppress as they narrate society’s most important and emotional life events. Nowadays, they can be heard ringing through Cairo, the Sudanese wartime wedding capital.
Sharifa Kheir at her jirtig. The ceremony is mostly practiced in the central and northern Nile region of Sudan, as well as the Nubian region.by Sharifa Kheir
Far from being a simple or lesser art form, the genre of Aghani El Banat comes alive through complex polyrhythms, interlocking patterns, and often pentatonic structures. The syncopated hand clapping, call and response song, and vibrant tom tom rhythm — pioneered by ex-slaves in the urban centers of Kosti and then Khartoum — have become a foundation for contemporary popular Sudanese music.
The genre has been shaped by a line of revered performers, such as political activist and ghanaya Hawa Al-Tagtaga, who was ousted by the men in her family for choosing to become a singer, and her student Gisma. The latter also taught Subhia the traditional bridal dance, which has between 60 and 90 specific songs, and reshaped the wedding industry by setting new trends and standards.
“Aghani El Banat shows how strong a Sudanese lady can be. She can be a mother, a wife, anything,” Dubai-based legal advisor Sharifa Kheir tells OkayAfrica. “Every song has a story. They show the depth of Sudanese culture.”
Aghani El Banat and the tom tom rhythm have also come to influence the music of diasporic and contemporary artists who create outside the wedding realm, like Alsarah & The Nubatones. However, the genre’s essence is kept alive through the jirtig and the art of live performance, rather than recordings.
An ancient Nubian rite of passage
When the couple has made their grand entrance to the sound of Aghani El Sirah, a grandmother blesses their heads with dhareera, a mixture of sandalwood powder, mahlab, and musk. Several kinds of incense are burning on a large tray in front of them, warding off bad spirits. The couple is handed two glasses of milk, each takes a sip, and spits it in each other’s face to ensure fertility. Whoever spits first is believed to be the leader of the relationship.
A practice from Ancient Nubia, the jirtig became inscribed on UNESCO’s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in December 2025.
While the woman in all her striking jewelry and delicious scents is arguably the highlight of the night, “jirtig” actually means “to make him king” in ancient Meroitic languages; it is composed of the Meroitic word "Qor" (king) and the suffix "tig" (to do or to make).
However, Aghani El Banat is the quintessential soundtrack to a Sudanese woman’s experience and balances out the focus on men/getting married to men by imbuing the event with a healthy dose of female agency. After all, here’s a genre that is neither associated with male-run institutions nor bound by political or religious censorship, ushering people through one of the most important gateways in their lives.
“My favourite thing about the jirtig is the habobat, the elders. It’s their time to hold this sacred ceremony for you.” - Atheel Elmalikby Amuna Wagner
“I could have done without the white dress day, but the jirtig has always been the cornerstone,” Sudanese American filmmaker and curator Atheel Elmalik tells OkayAfrica.
As someone who’s always been interested in the Sudanese rituals and ceremonies that survived Arab colonization and Islamisization, she brought curiosity to learning these practices’ origins. Elmalik explains that the colors, materials, and incense tell us about what it means to become elevated to the level of a royal person and therefore be closer to God on this sacred day of union and prayer.
Red symbolizes blood and sacrifice. “You’re making an offering: it’s life force for life force,” she says. “You feed and appease the spirits so that this other life force can flourish and have goodness.”
“Gold has always been the colour of protection, shining and reflecting the light of the sun and elevating to the status of royalty,” she continues. “In Ancient Nubia, there was a strong correlation between gods and kings. People who had a relationship with the divine often got to be royal, and a lot of that was associated with smell. Having access to a beautiful smell from different countries was thought to connect you with the divine.”
The music, with its various influences, serves as a reminder of Sudan’s multilayered cultural identities. “The lyrics are all about bigging you up and praying for you,” says Elmalik. “In the music, I can feel Islam and pre-Islam coming together.”
Both Elmalik and Kheir planned their jirtig in Cairo in 2023, the year that war broke out in Sudan.
“It was interesting to see how weddings resumed almost a month after the [beginning of the] war,” says Elmalik. “New life must sprout even in the midst of death and destruction. Everyone oriented towards that.”
All necessary paraphernalia are available in Cairo, where recently displaced women have leaned into their entrepreneurial skills and built up a wedding economy.by Amuna Wagner
Egypt has flourished with displaced Sudanese women turning wedding ceremonies into a lifeline, making and selling products from clothes to food to jewellery and furniture. Some streets in Giza are fully dedicated to the jirtig, with a wide range of attire, ceremony tools, and ladies sipping tea while sharing their opinions readily. Ghanayat (plural for singers) are in high demand; any bride planning her jirtig will first be asked if she has secured a singer yet.
“It was interesting to support these businesses and see the artistry of all this beauty in the aftermath of collapse,” says Elmalik. “It was very moving.”
“I got really emotional at my jirtig,” shares Kheir. “It made me feel like I’m leaving my family and going to live with someone else. Everyone is saying goodbye and giving you their blessings, and you’re going to build your own life.”
Stepping into a new chapter by undergoing this ancient rite of passage still means the world to many young Sudanese people, whether they are doing it in the country or not. The sounds of Aghani El Banat accompany them through the whole process, praising them, encouraging them, and reminding them of their worth and beauty.
