Pharaonic, Roman, Byzantine, Arab, Ethiopian, and East and West African cultures all have echoes in southern Egypt's Nubia region. The region is revered as a link between black Africa, the Middle East, and the Mediterrean. Once dubbed the "Captain of Nubian Music," and later the "Godfather" of the genre, Ali Hassan Kuban got his start in the village of Kuban singing and playing percussion "like any other Nubian boy," as he once put it, and serenading passengers on boats traveling the Nile. Kuban would go on to become Nubian music's most innovative composer, singer and band leader.

In 1942, Kuban moved to Cairo where he studied at the Boy Scout's college, and worked as an apprentice to a tailor. By then, he had also learned to play clarinet and girba (bagpipes) and begun to get work as a musician. A brush with lung disease stopped his career for a time, but also inspired him to study music more professionally, and how to construct and arrange a band that would support his voice. Living among displaced Nubians in the neighborhood of Abdin, he and his band found many opportunities to play at week-long Nubian weddings, where complex tar (frame drum) and hand-clap rhythms, girba and traditional chants enliven pre-nuptial bashes. Kuban had an epiphany when he heard a jazz band from Harlem performing at Cairo's Gezira Sporting Club. The blended sounds of trombone, saxophone, clarinet and guitar and drums was a revelation, and he instantly wanted to experiment along those lines himself. "They were all black," Kuban once said. "We all related very strongly. I wondered why we weren't doing something similar…I never considered any political implications." After playing in the orchestra for the opera Aida in 1949, Kuban began to work the clubs in Cairo, Alexandria and Aswan, revamping the old music with sax, electric guitar, bass, organ, trumpet and accordion. In addition, because there were so few Nubian speakers, and those were divided into two very different dialects, Kuban took to setting Nubian tunes to Arabic lyrics so that more listeners could understand them.

Of course, there were objections from purists who felt he was denaturing Nubian music by introducing Western harmonies and instruments, and Arabic language. Some called Kuban's style Nubi-shaabi, allying it with the youth-oriented, street pop music of Cairo. Whatever it was called, Kuban's music caught on in a big way. In 1964, the newly built Aswan dam created Lake Nasser, the world's biggest man-made lake. The project displaced 100,000 Nubians many of whom went to cities, filled with a nostalgic love for their buried past. This influx assured Kuban and his musicians all the work they could handle.

Kuban's office in Cairo's largely Nubian Abdeen neighborhood became a kind of cultural center for Egyptian and Sudanese Nubians. Dozens of musicians operated out of that office. The core group was Kuban's Nubian Band, but these musicians could regroup to play in a variety of formations depending on the number and nature of events on any given day. Kuban himself would sometimes make the rounds singing with different musicians at various gatherings in a single night.

Later on, when the "world music" phenomenon began to bubble up in Europe and the U.S., Kuban brought his modern take on Nubian culture to the world. He made his international debut at Berlin's Heimatklaenge festival in 1989, and went on to perform widely, including appearances at France's MIDEM conference in 1993, the WOMAD festival in Japan and the Montreal Jazz Festival in 1994, and at Central Park Summerstage in New York in 1995. Employing over 60 musicians and operating seven bands, Kuban continued playing traditional and popular music for both urban and rural Nubian enclaves in Cairo until he died there from a heart attack in June, 2001.