An Unexpected Musical Journey: Q&A with Purchase Alum Ahmed Abdullahi Gallab

By Summer Tyler

Courtesy of Ahmed Abdullahi Gallab.

Purchase alum, Ahmed Abdullahi Gallab, is the composer of "Roald Dahl's The Enormous Crocodile the Musical." The musical is based on the children's book by Roald Dahl, following the story of a crocodile who grows tired of the food in his swamp and decides that he wants to eat children.

The musical has taken to the stage in the UK, performing two seasons in London at the Regent's Park Open Air Theatre in 2024 and one season at the Leeds Playhouse in 2023. As of 2025, the musical will make its U.S. debut at the Children's Theatre Company in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Gallab, also known by the stage name "Sinkane," writes all of his music and performs with a six-piece band, blending genres such as rock, reggae fusion and funk with Sudanese pop.

Gallab received his master's degree in studio composition, graduating in 2022 from Purchase. He discusses how exploring musical theatre and going back to school helped him grow and prosper as a composer and songwriter, utilizing his strengths and preferred musical styles to bring these storybook characters to life.

Tell me a little bit about the musical. How did you get involved?

"I started the musical six years ago. I was asked by the Roald Dahl Story Company. They sent me a cold call email randomly, asking me if I'd like to be involved in writing a musical. It came out of the blue. I thought it was a joke. I didn't even take it that seriously. They had heard about me from my music that I make. And I got a response back from them, and they were like, ‘we're coming to the states to do some work, we'd like to meet up with you, talk more about this’ kind of thing. And I was like, all right, cool, no problem. And I met with them and I realized very quickly that they were serious and, you know, I just kind of let them know… I've never done anything like this before, but I would love to do it, and I'm into taking the leap into this kind of thing. And so, they went back to the UK and then sent me another email and asked me what book I wanted to work on. It was pretty surreal, you know, because I grew up reading Roald Dahl, and then the Roald Dahl Story Company comes at me, and I've never done anything like they're asking me to do. And then they say, which one do you want to do? So, I picked my favorite one as a kid, The Enormous Crocodile, and they assembled a team for me. I met Emily Lim [director] and Suhayla El-Bushra [book writer and lyricist]. Suhayla, it's serendipitous because we're both Sudanese, and I didn't know I'd be working with another Sudanese creative. It's the first time I've ever worked with one like that. We got together, we did a few workshops together, pitched it to the team, and they were excited about it, and we hit the ground running. I was actually at Purchase while I was working on it. And just kept going, you know, and kept going and going and going and here we are now."

(From left to right) Ryan Crellin-Simpson, Taya Ming and Nia Stephen in the U.S. Premiere of "The Enormous Crocodile The Musical." (Photo by Glen Stubbe Photography)

Let's discuss your role as a composer. What were some of your main objectives going into this, having to adapt a children's book into a musical?

"The biggest thing I think for all of us was that we wanted to make this greater than the sum of its parts. We wanted to make this a really engaging and exciting musical for children, because a lot of the shows that are presented to kids that age are very cheap. They're very simple, and they don't have much of a budget, and they create this very simplified, small thing. Not to say that that's bad, but we wanted it to hit as hard as a West End or Broadway show and have the kind of musical prowess, I guess, as those and have the kind of storyline, narrative, and staging as something that big. We got a lot of support from the team, the Roald Dahl Story Company, to work like that, and we just spent a lot of time working through everything. Suhayla would send me a bit of dialogue and some lyrics, and I would put a song together. I really enjoy working that way, where someone kind of gives me a prompt and then I can kind of get into myself and do something. We went back and forth for a while, got a good crop of songs, and then turned them into Emily [Lim] and Tom Brady, the musical director. And the four of us really sank our teeth into the whole thing, analyzing everything to ensure it was clear, clean, and absolutely perfect for these kids. You can't leap any point of ambiguity in the songwriting, in the composition, in the dialogue, in the lyrics, and everything. And it was a pretty amazing challenge. We spent six years working on it and doing workshops, getting feedback, and going back to the drawing board and figuring out which beats didn't hit, which beats did hit, if we had to work on something, you know, we'd work on it, and then we'd see if it still fit into the show and maybe it didn't. So it was a very tedious project, but it was pretty awesome."

Given your work with Sinkane, blending various genres and performing, was pursuing a career in musical theatre always your goal?

"No, actually, um, for a long time, I had no interest in musicals or musical theater. But I became curious when I got asked to do this. And I threw myself into it, and it was a really amazing experience, and now I'm really into it. I really enjoyed the process. It's a lot different than making my own records; working with the team this rigorously really opened me up to understanding how to collaborate and how to just kind of trust the process of collaboration. And now that I've done it, I want to do more."

Do you think your own musical styles influenced your decisions in bringing these characters to life and in writing the music?

"Yeah, absolutely. I think not only that, but my, like people in my periphery, you know, like my mom and the way she acts and my family or, like, my wife or my friends, you know, like I could find an energy from a friend of mine that really correlated with a certain character and it made it really fun for me to to write for that character."

Would you say it was a balance between having it be a little silly since it's a show for children, but also being able to have families and parents enjoy it as well?

"That was a very important thing that we talked about right off the rip. One of the things we said was, this isn't like Pixar, that like winks at the parents and has these jokes that go over the kid's head, and it's exciting for the parents, you know, to keep them engaged. We wanted everyone to be engaged. So everything we said had to hit with the kids, for the kids, and also for the families, you know, so everyone is engaged. And that was really fun. And it opened up the opportunity for kind of a conversation between the kids and the show, where we would put bits in the show that made them want to engage with us, you know, like throwing peanuts at the crocodile or like we have we have a spider that comes down behind the scoutmaster really slowly and the scoutmaster is like, what, you know, aloof to the situation and the kids are like screaming, like, there's something behind you, like that kind of stuff. That was really fun to explore and to work on."

(From front to back) Ming, Crellin-Simpson, Alison Arnopp, Siobhan Athwal and Stephen of "The Enormous Crocodile The musical" form the crocodile illusion with costume props. (Photo by Glen Stubbe Photography)

What unexpected challenges came up during the process?

"The pandemic was a huge one. When we started writing, it was 2019. We hit the ground running, wrote a lot of music, had a really great workshop, and then I came home, and two days later, the pandemic hit, and we completely stopped working for a good, like, eight months. You know, there were no emails back and forth. And then when they did, when the emails did start coming back, and the feedback we got started coming, I didn't expect so much analyzing of everything. I often found myself the one in the group who said, hey guys, this isn't Hamlet. You know, this is a very simple story. Let's like, let's lean into the simplicity of this and not go super hard into analyzing the motive of the croc in such a Shakespearean way, you know? But I'm really glad that I had that opportunity and was challenged to do that because it helped me understand how to narrate the show with music, and like what exactly sounds like the feeling or the beat that we're working on."

Considering your experience in the music industry, what do you think you gained from studying at Purchase?

"The pandemic hit, and I wasn't touring anymore, and the music business completely shut down. So I needed something to do, and I thought it would be great to go back to school. I've always wanted to go back to school; growing up with academic parents, they're both professors. So my place in academia feels very natural to just kind of be a part of it. And I always found myself in musical settings, not being able to communicate what I wanted with other people. In New York, a lot of people went to music school, and they communicate in that language. And I didn't, so it would be hard for me to really get the point across to a lot of people. And so I thought to myself, this would be really great for me to go back and study something that I really want to enjoy. I didn't really enjoy studying what I did in undergrad.
And I was too intimidated to study music because I thought, like, oh, you have to learn how to read music, and I don't know how to read music, and you have to, you know, you have to have had a few years of really working on it to like enter college, you know, with that. I applied, and I got in, and I really took it in like a sponge.

"I took as many theory classes as I possibly could, studio production, ear training, all of the things that I felt were my weaknesses. It was so much fun to learn, so engaging for me. I couldn't be more excited about every class and learning, and it just kind of felt like, all this stuff that I do kind of know in my head, now I'm getting the language for it, and I'm learning the way to communicate it. It's allowed me to explore things better and more holistically and more, you know, honestly, I guess. That was really a lot of fun. It was also really interesting being at Purchase because a lot of the undergrad classes I took, I took with freshmen. I came in when I was like 38, I think. And. It was funny that, like, you know, you come into college at 19, everyone's the same. They just want to, like, hang out with their friends and not really, you know, care too much about studying in the way that I was really engaged in it. That was interesting to me. And then there were a lot of new ideas because these kids are so much younger than me that I really was able to connect with and be inspired by."

Was there a professor you had who inspired or stuck with you?

"Adam Pietrykowski was my advisor. I did a lot of private study with him. He might be the best professor, or best teacher, or best mentor I've ever had. He just made everything feel so easy and exciting to learn. Me and a couple of my friends that graduated the program together, we were like, Man, I wish we could just hire him to continue learning with him or continue having private studies with him because he's just so creative. I also took a lot of ear training from Johnathan Jetter. He challenged me quite a bit with ear training. It was a lot for me to take on, and I felt like I was diving into the deep end, and he made it seem exciting as well. So I would say those two in particular."

What advice would you give to current music or studio composition majors at Purchase?

"If this is what they seriously want to do, to put all of their time into it, to really understand and develop their voice, and to put themselves out there, to not be afraid to fail, that the journey is going to start after school, and it's not gonna be easy. You should learn to find ways to embrace that because it's gonna be a bit demoralizing at times, especially now, the music industry is in a really rough place. But if this is what you want to do, you can do it, and you should. There should be more people making music and taking it very seriously because it's an important thing for the community. It's an important thing for all of us; it's like medicine.

"I would also say, take as many classes as possible, to learn as many things as you can. Purchase has a very special program within the world of music school. It's a lot more creative and open-minded than a lot of schools. There's Berkeley and there's NYU…which carry this weight with them that they're very prestigious and wonderful. But Purchase allows you to let your freak flag fly and allows you to really explore yourself holistically, completely, without any intimidation, and with a lot of support. So, don't take that for granted because there are a lot of other places that are not like that."

In general, is there anything else you'd like to share about your creative process? What separates you from other composers?

"I'm not afraid to learn. I remember in one of my classes. A couple of kids [at Purchase] looked me up and were like, ‘Why are you here?’ Even one of the professors in my first semester was like, ‘What are you doing here? You've already succeeded as a musician, and you have a career. What's the point of you being here?’ I think it's very important to stay curious and to stay in a place where you feel like you're wondering, and you're excited and inspired by the unknown, such that you seek it. I'm a very different musician than I was before I started my master's program, and I'm better for it. I did this musical [The Enormous Crocodile] through that program. My skill for that came from studying and learning something new. Had I not done that, I don't think I would have been able to achieve what I achieved with everything post-purchase. So stay curious and really just throw yourself into it. It's very exciting. The world's your oyster, and you have the internet and school, and that's a lot of powerful information that can help you."

"The Enormous Crocodile the Musical" is coming to the CTC in Minneapolis, showing performances from October 1 to November 23, and to the Kirk Douglas Theatre in Los Angeles, California, from December 5 to January 4. Additionally, it will be at The Lowry, Salford, from December 10 to January 4.