This spring has been a rich one for the Gnawa lovers of New York. If you know where to listen, the irresistible shuffle of Gnawa’s metal qraqebs and mesmeric melodies of the guembri have been in the air more than they usually are and in spaces where they have rarely been. From the weeklong Gnawa Festival Tour in March to a very special performance by local group Innov Gnawa on April 20, here’s a rundown of what has been happening.
To begin, for those new to Gnawa music, here’s a primer (excerpted from a previous Afropop post): Gnawa (or Gnaoua) is a musical and spiritual lifeblood of Morocco. The origins of this trance-inducing music lie with the people taken from the Sahel as slaves to Morocco beginning in the 12th century and given the label “Gnawa” (likely derived from a Hausa demonym for those from Kano,Nigeria). Although enslavement stripped them of liberty, they kept their musical knowledge and animistic traditions, which eventually morphed into Gnawa, only in recent decades recognized as a central part of Morocco’s cultural heritage. One can hear traces of these origins by listening to music made by hunters (donsow) in Mali.
Gnawa music is made with the three-string guembri or sentir (akin to a larger, bass version of Mali’s ngoni) played by the maalem (master) and the hypnotic, rhythm-keeping metal qraqeb (similar to large castanets). In Morocco, Gnawa is something of a underground national music, maintained in a more traditional form by maalems and blended with globalized music like rock, reggae and hip-hop to create some beautiful, contemporary Moroccan sounds (or with dance, like these breakdancing Gnawis). Gnawa is changing in other ways too: the generally male-dominated musical form is seeing more women take center stage on guembri and qraqeb, like Asmâa Hamzaoui.
Since the early 20th century, Gnawa has been gaining recognition beyond North Africa as well; Jamaican-American writer Claude McKay’s promoted the music during the Harlem Renaissance, and many jazz and blues musicians who have been inspired since, Randy Weston, Ornette Coleman, Peter Gabriel and Carlos Santana among them. In New York City today, the live Gnawa scene is burgeoning, in large part thanks to the work of Innov Gnawa. We’ve heard from Innov Gnawa quite a bit since Samir Langus and Maalem Hassan Ben Jaafer founded the group three years ago.
Langus came up in the city of Agadir on Morocco’s southwest coast, raised in an Aïssawa family—a different Moroccan musical tradition that mainly uses the reedy ghaita and the bentir drum. However, it was the pulse and melodies of Gnawa music that captivated Langus, inspiring him to learn the style even though, as he says, “Being a Gnawi in Morocco, it’s kind of a shame.” Langus explains that Gnawis don’t get the respect they deserve, despite the popularity of the music. Aspirations to learn Gnawa are often met with negativity. His vision is to change that attitude and set up a school in New York to teach Gnawa and other Moroccan musical styles.
