Sometimes it pays to listen to an artist simply because they have an intriguing name. In the case of Sudan Archives, I was hooked from the moment “Did You Know” (the lead-off track on 2019’s Athena) dropped from sparse violin string plucks and honeyed vocals into a heavy, synthesized low-end groove, fuzzed and snapping beat, and flippant, multi-tracked vocals.
Sudan Archives isn’t from some far-off land, as her name implies, but Cincinnati, Ohio. She’s mostly self-taught on violin, which she became interested in after a group of fiddlers played for her fourth-grade class. She learned to play by ear, honing her skills in the church band. Born Brittney Denise Parks, the singer/violinist has been known as Sudan since she was a teen; a name she not only assumed but has come to embody in her sound, which began to take shape after she discovered the one-string fiddling of Northern Africa.
“The scales they play just sounded totally different to classical music,” she told Vancouver BC paper the Georgia Straight in 2018.