Contemporary Sudanese music draws a lot of influences both from Arabic musical as well as subsaharan traditions. “[...]It is rooted in the madeeh (praising the Prophet Mohamed in song). The genre filled out into something quite irreverent in the 1930s and 1940s when haqiba music, the madeeh 's secular successor, caught on. Haqiba, a predominantly vocal art in which the musicians accompanying the lead singer use few instruments, spread like wildfire in the urban centres of Sudan. It was the music of weddings, family gatherings and wild impromptu parties.

Haqiba drew inspiration from indigenous Sudanese and other African musical traditions in which backing singers clapped along rhythmically and the audience joined in both song and dance. The lead singer's incantations induced a trance-like experience in which spectators swayed along to the rhythm of the beat“ as Gamal Nkrumah wrote in a 2004 article Al Ahram Weekly newspaper. One of the first singers we at Habibi Funk came across some years ago and who struck a chord with us was Sharhabil Ahmed. Sharhabil was born in 1935 and he is the founding father of the Sudanese Jazz scene. His aim was to modernize Sudanese music by bringing it together with western influences and instrumentation like he summarized it himself in a 2004 interview for „Al Ahram Weekly“: