Longing for Home: Tiris and "Tiris Nibreeha"

Tiris is a band that was formed by Sahwari refugees in refugee camps in Algeria. The band sings about love, loss and their struggle to return to an independent homeland in Western Sahara. They made an auspicious debut at the Festival au Desert in Mali in 2005, earning rave reviews and despite being scheduled for one performance, were brought back on the last night by popular demand. The band mixes traditional Sahwari music with other types of genres, including desert blues, flamenco, reggae and jazz. They also use modern instrumentation but include traditional instruments like tbal and tidnit. They have released one album. This song, Tiris Nibreeha (I Love Tiris), refers to the region of Western Sahara, known for its holy men, poets and musicians, that the band takes its name from, and can be found on their 2007 album Sandtracks as well as the 2008 compilation Putumayo Presents: Acoustic Arabia.

A Lover Back Home: Jamal Porto and "Gamar Badawi"

Today's song is by an Sudanese artist named Jamal Porto, who lived at an Egyptian inn in the Sinai called RAS. At RAS, musicians have gathered for over twenty years to meet and play, and the family that owns the inn built a recording studio. In 2005, they sent out a call to musicians from all over the world, and forty artists from ten nations responded. They played and recorded music, which resulted in a CD called The RAS Project: A Musical Journey in Sinai. This song, Gamar Badawi, is from that album and is also on the 2008 Putumayo compilation Acoustic Arabia, and is a song of longing for a beloved back in Sudan.