For most, yours truly included, 'Bride Of The Zar' by Egyptian band Rango, will be the first introduction to the Sudanese Zar voodoo mysticism and the related music genre rango, something the 30IPS label draws attention on with a number of ridiculous warning messages on the album cover: "No chickens were harmed and no malevolent spirits manifested during the making of this album." and "Unscrupulous illegal file sharing and downloading will, on the balance of probability, jeopardize your future enjoyment of rango and enrage the Sudani spirits and other entities that reside in the vintage gourd resonators!". Allow me to elaborate on a bit of history: The first wave of Sudanese immigrants came to Egypt when Muhammad Ali invaded Sudan in 1820 obliging the country to provide slaves to serve in the Egyptian army ('Major' is a reference to that period) and later to work in the cotton industry. Those Sudanese immigrants brought with them the Zar ritual, a form of Sudanese mysticism which through playing trance music using the rango, a rare Sudanese xylophone, tried to summon djinns. The ritual was banned, but over time rango music remained popular, especially for weddings and other social events. Because fewer and fewer rangos were in circulation (for the construction of the instrument a special kind of gourd that only grows in Sudan is required) and most rango masters had passed on, by the end of the 1970s the genre was as good as extinct. Almost by chance Hassan Bergamon, these days bandleader with Rango, was rediscovered during the making of a TV documentary. The sound of Rango is closely related to the Nubian sound of Ali Hassan Kuban and also has convergences with Tuareg music. One of the world music picks of 2010!