An exiled Sudanese singer’s soulful protest

By Yasir Faiz

On a starry night in Nairobi earlier this month, Sudanese singer Mohamed Adam Abbo, known by his artist name Wad Abbo, stood beneath the lights of Alliance Francaise’s concert stage to launch his first album. His voice, rich and stirring, carried verses in Sudanese Arabic and Darfuri dialects.

The audience of Sudanese, Kenyans, other Africans, and Europeans responded in kind with swaying, clapping, and sometimes singing along.

He sang for peace in Sudan, repeating lines that felt like prayers. “When hardship passes, peace comes to us. No matter how stubborn the quarrels, we live as dear ones.” In another song, steeped in Darfuri rhythms, he called out, “when peace comes to us, welcome.

If autumn comes, prepare the seeds. If harvest time comes, it will find us waiting.” The songs evoked both memory and longing, drawing his listeners into the deep emotional terrain of exile and resilience.

For Abbo, this moment was more than a debut. It was an act of survival. The ongoing war in Sudan forced him to flee to Kenya, leaving behind his home, community, and bandmates. In Nairobi, he pieced together a new group of six musicians, four of them Kenyan, and resumed his cultural and musical initiative, the Nogara Project, rooted in the belief that Sudan’s diverse cultural and musical heritage can serve as a tool for dialogue, peace, and healing.

He began his professional journey in music and culture in 2018, and his vision and creativity earned him the Prince Claus Seed Award in 2022.

Abbo’s music is multilingual and multi-dialectal, weaving together strands from across Sudan. His goal, he says, is to help Sudanese rediscover one another and to share this richness with the world. Since April 15, 2023, Sudan has been engulfed in yet another devastating war, and Abbo feels a deep duty as a musician to respond. “Music is my way of being a peacemaker,” he explains. “It reminds us of how we lived together before, of what we share, of the values that hold us as one people.”

When Peace Comes

His debut album, When Peace Comes, is a tapestry of 14 songs drawn from different regions and languages of Sudan. Some are Abbo’s own compositions, others are adaptations of traditional songs, but all revolve around a call for peace. The title track carries a particularly personal resonance.

Written by a man from Darfur who spent nearly 20 years in IDP camps, the song is a dream of return: a vision of going back to the farm, the village, the land that embodies identity and belonging. “Before he could return, a new war broke out,” Abbo recalled.

“That story struck me deeply because I grew up near Otash camp in Nyala, where he lived. Now I am also displaced. This song reminds me, and reminds all of us, that when peace comes, we will return, meet our scattered neighbors and friends, and rebuild our country.”

Roots in Nyala

Abbo’s connection to displaced communities did not begin with the current war. As a child in Nyala, during the Darfur conflict, he joined the Friendship Band, a local group that performed in camps surrounding the city such as Otash, Beliel, Kalma, and others.

They sang and acted for displaced families, using performance to shift the heavy atmosphere of exile. “We wanted them to feel part of Nyala, to feel accepted, to express themselves freely,” he recalls. Those early experiences taught him that music could be more than entertainment; it could be a tool for healing.

That mission continues today. Recently, Abbo held two concerts in the Kiryandongo refugee camp in Uganda. He plans to extend his performances to camps in other neighboring countries. “This is my duty as an artist,” he says. “To sing for my community, for those who most need joy, to make them feel remembered.”

Music Without Borders

Living in Nairobi has also given Abbo a deeper appreciation of music as a universal language. His current band includes both Sudanese and Kenyan musicians, and his audiences often don’t understand the lyrics. Yet they respond, dancing, clapping, and sharing in the emotion.

“I always knew music was a world language,” he said. “But I didn’t fully experience it until I came here. It brings people together, no matter their language, religion, or background.”

Abbo is deeply grateful for his experience in Nairobi, where he continues to grow. This journey has strengthened his ability to give musically and to express the culture, concerns, and hopes of the Sudanese people.

The Nogara Project

At the heart of Abbo’s work is the Nogara Project, which he co-founded and now manages from Nairobi. Sudan’s long history of war and displacement has uprooted people from their cultural roots, leaving many communities disconnected from each other’s languages, music, and traditions.

This fragmentation, Abbo believes, is linked to the mismanagement of Sudan’s diversity. “Many Sudanese don’t know each other,” he explained, “especially the younger generations, my generation.”

Nogara seeks to rebuild those cultural bridges. By presenting the rhythms, songs, and traditions of different Sudanese communities, it helps people rediscover their shared heritage. In the current war, as Sudanese are displaced both within the country and across borders, the project has taken on new urgency. “Now our mission is also to represent Sudan to the world,” he says. “To show that Sudan is not only a land of war, but a place rich in cultures, languages, music, and rhythms.”

A Music of Exile and Hope

Abbo’s journey embodies both rupture and continuity. He has lost his home, his original band, and his physical connection to Sudan. Yet his music carries Sudan with him, wherever he goes. His songs document the suffering of displacement but also insist on the possibility of peace and return.

The Nairobi album launch was, in many ways, a microcosm of that vision: Sudanese and non-Sudanese gathered together, connecting across languages and experiences, through the shared pulse of music. “When peace comes,” Abbo sang, “we will be ready.” It was a promise that even in exile, culture endures, and that in song lies the seeds of return.

For Mohamed Adam Abbo, music is not just language. It is memory, resistance, and hope. It is the bridge between a painful present and an imagined prosperous future. And it is, above all, a call: a call to remember, to endure, and to believe that peace, one day, will come.