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Rafiki Jazz New Urdu Single TUM NA AAYE

Tum Na Aaye 04.45 (words Faiz Ahmed Faiz, music Tony Bowring/Sarah Yaseen) ‘Before you came, everything was the same’ (Urdu: Pakistan)

Tum Na Aaye: ahead of NDUGGU (Dust) their upcoming 5th album release, single Tum Na Aaye offers a fine taste of what’s to come from Rafiki Jazz in 2021. Sufi soul singer Sarah Yaseen brings real grace and feeling to this rendition of a profound poem from legendary Pakistani Urdu poet and author Faiz Ahmed Faiz, about how we view and shape our worlds through our personal relationships. Rafiki Jazz as always bridge their musical differences with aplomb, as the elegant & metaphoric Urdu verse languidly dances across a swinging Afro-Cuban groove framed by a poignant Arab-Andaluz melody line.

Tum Na Aaye features Sarah Yaseen: vocals, Catherine Ngozi Carr: guitar, Mina Mikhail Salama: duduk, Kadialy Kouyate: kora, Tony Koni: bass guitar, John Ball: tabla, Guery Tibirica: gumbe.

Rafiki Jazz ‘Brilliant in musicality and transcendent in sound’ (WOMAD) has been a uniquely successful touring & recording band since 2007, bringing together a big group of star musicians and singers from Africa, India, the Middle East, South America and Europe, bound together on a mission to share their ‘sweeping divine borderless music’ (FATEA) Their 2017 album ‘Har Dam Sahara’ reached the top twenty in the Transglobal World Music Charts with Songlines magazine voting it as Top of the World, whilst describing its 2019 sequel album ‘Saraba Sufiyana’ as ‘fresh and dynamic and very exciting...the eloquence of the musical interplay is a joy’.

ALBUM RELEASE: NDUGGU (Dust) (KoniCD012) releases in March 2021
The pandemic year of 2020 brought profound change, isolation and opportunity for Rafiki Jazz. Together, with their combined imaginations and talents they have created and recorded a new album entirely remotely on a shared virtual platform, and the result is NDUGGU (Dust).

The sand and dust of the title track Nduggu Bouy highlights desertification and a call for action on our global climate emergency, while dust remains a powerful symbol of our ultimate destiny. Here are eight new internationalist songs of enlightenment and change that cherish the human spirit, its joy and its fragility.
 
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