With “Tawjah”, the opening track of the EP Dafayer, UAE-based Afro-Arab ensemble AlMultaqa take the Amazigh word for family and set it at the centre of their first recorded project. Described by the group as a journey that runs from the meeting of the Blue and White Nile to the Tigris and Euphrates, Dafayer (Arabic for “braids”) ties Sudanese, wider African and Arab lineages into one shared frame.

“Tawjah” builds that idea through voices, oud, kora, adungu and balafon, written around Sudanese pentatonic practice shaped within orchestral arrangements led by Maestro Ahmad Shamma. The track presents family as an early site of culture and memory, where language, rhythm and story are first carried and where those river-connected traditions continue to move.