Nass El Ghiwane: Moroccan Folk, Gnawa and Avant-Garde Music
Nass El Ghiwane in the 70s via the Markaz Review
Nass El Ghiwane’s music brings together a rainbow of sounds. They’ve been called the Beatles and the Rolling Stones of Morocco, which tells us something about their place in the country’s musical hall of fame. Founded in 1970 by Omar Sayyed and four friends, the band from Casablanca has its origins in avant-garde political theater and the its name literally translates to “People of Song”. The group is credited with bringing Western instruments to the Moroccan music scene to create an unlikely but wildly effective combination with the musical tradition of Gnawa — a body of Sufi “musical events, performances, fraternal practices and therapeutic rituals that mixes the secular with the sacred that was traditionally practiced by slaves.” This music is what might be considered the original “trance music”. As Elias Muhanna describes in his interview with Sayyed, the group’s music was characterized by a “motley assortment of traditional instruments in untraditional combinations: the senator, a gut-stringed bass lute, banjo, kettle-drums…”
““Their music doesn’t rock — it jangles, rumbles and spins. It has a coarse, vaguely rural quality.” ”
As Benjamin Jones describes for The Markaz Review, “This combative folk music was a radical departure from previous styles of North African popular music…in their proud use of local instruments, indigenous genres, and Moroccan language.” Their sound has been described as revolutionary and even sublime. Alessandra Ciucci suggests that their music “bore witness to an era [in Moroccan history] so marked by political violence and oppression that it came to be referred to as the “Years of Lead”…and at the same time, giving voice to collective hopes, dreams and aspirations.”
The documentary Trances – directed by Ahmed El Maanouni – takes the band as its subject. El Maanouni films the band during “a series of electrifying live performances in Tunisia, Morocco, and France; on the streets of Casablanca; and in intimate conversations.”
via UW Madison
via Criterion
via IMDB
Sources & Further Reading: Folk the Kasbah, Elias Muhanna and Omar Sayyed
