In a meeting with Djibouti's minister of culture in late 2016, we discussed Somali and Afar music from his country. The conversation gradually grew to East African music culture at large and when I asked if he enjoyed the music of Mohamed Wardi, a Sudanese legend, he placed his phone down, adjusted his glasses, put his hands into the heavens and said "Wardi!," as if to imply that we mere mortals have no business speaking so casually about a singer, composer, poet, and activist deified across much of Africa and the Arabic speaking world.

Such is the reputation of Sudanese music, particularly in East Africa and what is often referred to as the "Sudanic Belt," a cultural zone that stretches from Sudan all the way west to Mauritania, covering much of the Sahara and the Sahel, lands where Sudanese artists are household names and Sudanese poems are regularly used as lyrics to produce the latest hits. Sudan is a land of poets. When protesters take to the streets of the capital, they read poems.