The Brooklyn-based combo Alsarah & The Nubatones came together out of a collective love for Nubian music and a genuine belief that soul transcends all cultural and linguistic barriers. Inspired by Nubian music’s pentatonic scales, they blend original material and traditional music of central Sudan with Nubian songs of return, a diasporic form created by Southern Egyptians forced from their land in the 1970s by the Aswan Dam. A Sudanese-born singer, songwriter and ethnomusicologist, Alsarah fled to Yemen with her family in 1990. They fled again four years later and came to the US, where Alsarah eventually moved to New York and assembled the Nubatones, featuring her sister Nahid on backing vocals, Togo-raised Mawuena Kodjovi on bass and trumpet, Rami El Aasser on Middle Eastern percussion and Brandon Terzic on oud.