Gnawa

Morocco’s Gnawa trance music: guembri, iron qraqeb and all-night ceremony.

Gnawa descends from West Africans brought north across the Sahara into Morocco, and the music cannot be separated from the lila, an all-night ceremony of healing and possession in which particular rhythms and colours call particular spirits. The guembri, a three-string bass lute, carries it. The qraqeb drive it. The maalem leads it.

Since the 1990s it has had a second life on stages and festival bills, and on records made with jazz and funk musicians who heard something familiar in the groove. Whether that second life serves the tradition or thins it is a live argument among Gnawa musicians rather than a settled question.

Both the ceremonial and the concert side are represented here.