For quite a long time, Gnawa music was just played stealthily functions by subjugated Dark Africans grabbed from the deserts of western Africa and brought to Morocco during bygone eras. Gnawa — a native word for Individuals of color — was both an oral history and a remedy to affliction.
Be that as it may, the story doesn’t end there. Gnawa proceeded with its process out into the Atlantic from the slave ports of Africa and arrived in America, where it assisted give with molding to the blues.
“At the point when you come here and hear Gnawa,” said American entertainer Bounce Shrewdness, “you feel exactly the same thing that we feel with the bygone era blues.”
The blues association
Shrewdness, who was in the Moroccan port city of Essaouira for its yearly Gnawa World Live concert, said you can follow the bygone era blues to the African American populations of Mali, Senegal and Gambia, large numbers of whom wound up in Morocco.
Shrewdness has portrayed Gnawa music as a “entrance to the past.”
“It provides us with a sign of personality, who we are in the bigger sense. You know, the Africanness in our blood,” Shrewdness said.
American percussionist Sulaiman Hakim said the early American blues and Gnawa share numerous likenesses in their melodic history. He said the gospel-like call and reaction so key to Gnawa is equivalent to he’d heard experiencing childhood in Los Angeles.
“Naturally, whenever I first heard the Gnawas, I said, ‘Wow this sounds like music from back home,'” Hakim said. “Furthermore, the way that they begin knocking some people’s socks off, very much like the moves was finished, harking back to the ’30s and ’40s, when you see Duke Ellington, Count Basie and everyone was moving.”
The verses of Gnawa tunes resounded as much in eleventh century Morocco as they did on manors in the Profound South, Hakim said.
The castanets – or krakebs – are the heartbeat of Gnawa. Oral history, went down through the ages, says that the krakebs were produced from the shackles of slaves. It’s difficult to be aware without a doubt, however numerous performers are in wonderment of the Gnawa for utilizing music to stop an excruciating past.
Gnawa’s recuperating power
There’s a more magical side to Gnawa that is likewise filling in prominence: customary services, called lilas. They are intricate, nightfall to-day break customs, where the Gnawa ace performer, known as a maalem, goes about as a melodic medium, approaching the spirits to assist with relieving different ills.
Lilas utilize the rehashed rhythms of the gimbri – a three stringed cousin of the bass – and the castanets to send audience members into daze. Shrewdness, a superfan of Gnawa music, said the timed rattle of the castanets pulls you under.
The entertainer said he went into a daze once and he will always remember it.
“It resembles being on the edge of time,” Astuteness said.
From the eleventh 100 years to the 21st
Shrewdness has watched Essaouira’s celebration develop from a religion following to drawing in up to 500,000 fans, including Western performers who need a run at the Moroccan blues. The old music is presently partaking in a mainstream blast as it tracks down new crowds in Europe and America.
Today, Gnawa has roused Moroccan groups who appreciate hero status, which would have flabbergasted their melodic progenitors. It has turned into the top amusement in Morocco.
Hakim said that each time he plays at the yearly celebration, he finds a new thing in the Gnawa playbook. He anticipated it would impact another age of performers.
Gnawa maalem Hamid el Kasri has helped make Gnawa a contemporary power. He plays tunes going back from the eleventh 100 years, and his back up artists wear a similar fancy silk robes and decorated fezes the Gnawans have worn for many years.
El Kasri, one of Morocco’s top maalems fills arenas all over Africa and Europe.
As Gnawa contacts new crowds, some have likewise modernized the old instruments. Maalem Mokhtar Gania zapped one of his gimbris, adding frets and design.
The actual music might be old, however it actually resounds today. What is important is that it comes directly from the heart, Gania said through an interpreter.
“Music isn’t only composed for the ear,” Gania said. “In Gnawa music, we start with the spirits.”