The present Doodle celebrates Sudanese author and oud player Asma Hamza. Asma was one of the Sudanese winners of the Laylat AlQadr AlKubra music competition on this day in 1997. This success was a defining moment in her profession and aided her benefit acknowledgment in a male-overwhelmed field.
Asma was born in 1932. As a child, she loved music and aspired to become a singer. She switched from singing tunes to whistling them because her vocal cords weren’t safe for that. Asma’s father borrowed an oud, which resembles a lute but has a shorter neck and no frets, so she could practice after hearing her whistle in harmony.
She taught herself how to play tunes she’d heard on the oud, from her own memory and ear for music. Her dad encouraged her musical career from the start, yet he was one of few. Around then, it was not socially satisfactory for ladies to make music in Sudan; Asma reviews that the primary piece she formed was covertly.
She became known as one of the first female composers in Sudan as she got older and continued to write melodies for a number of talented Arab musicians. She also kept getting better at playing the oud, and in 1946, she became one of the first women to get formal training to play the instrument.
Asma Hamza, thank you for sharing your musical skills and working a more equal world for women!