I've been continuing to explore the offerings over at GnawaMaVie's channel on YouTube. There are a few recordings from the Rabat-based maâlem Abdelkader Amlil. Like the musicians I mentioned in my recent post about GnawaMaVie, Maâlem Abdelkader isn't often heard on commercial recordings outside of Morocco.
I put together a playlist of about 2-1/2 hours of music from one lila performance, very nicely recorded. Many of the songs feature the fantastic Marrakchi singer Saîd Damir a.k.a. "Saghot", (He takes over the lead singing in clip number 4 of the playlist.) It's a striking performance - many of the pieces are played at a very slow tempo, allowing the singing to shine.
I have one cassette of Maâlem Abdelkader in the stash. It dates from around 2001 and features two long tracks. Hope you enjoy!
Last weekend the 15th Gnawa Festival in Essaouira was held. The festival usually features a number of ad-hoc collaborations between Gnawa groups and European or American musicians, usually jazz musicians. Sometimes these collaborations produced interesting textures (Mustapha Baqbou at the 2000 festival proved that Gnawa rock could pump up arena-sized crowds). Sometimes they produced train wrecks - Gnawa musicians don't necessarily understand jazz, and jazz musicians don't necessarily understand Gnawa music, so there is often much stepping on one another's musical toes.
I have a few tapes and CDs labeled "Festival d'Essaouira" from prior to 2003, but they are merely pirate mixtapes of tracks from Orchestre National de Barbes, Gnawa Diffusion and other artists. This CD is the earliest one I've seen that appears to be an official compilation of performances recorded on the festival stage. I've seen 2 editions of this disc, one with a 2003 date and one (pictured here) with a 2004 date.
This CD culls some pretty good performances from the festival stage. I believe the performances took place in either 2002 or 2003. It was around this time that drummer Karim Ziad began his artistic involvement with the festival, and his group Ifrikiya plays on several of these tracks. If you like the way fusion jazz and Gnawa sound together, this is a pretty good set. Also includes Amadou & Maryam on a couple tracks, some Houariyat fusion (!?) and a nice trad piece by an Algerian group, Ouled Sidna Bilal.
1) Sadati Manayo - Maâlem Mahmoud Guinéa & Band
2) La Illaha Illa Allah - Maâlem Mustapha Bakbou & Band + Louis Bertignac
3) Samaoui - Maâlem Hamid El Kasri & Band
4) Laribi - Maâlem Abdelkebir Merchane & Band
5) Dawi - Ouled Sidna Bilal
6) Hamdouchia - Maâlem Hamid El Kasri & Band
7) Baba El Arabi - Maâlem Mahmoud Guinéa & Band
8) Hamouda - Ifrikya, Maâlem Abdelkébir Merchane, Maâlem Abdeslam Alikane
9) Moul Hkaim - Bnet Houariyat & Ifrikya
10) Dek Illalane - Amadou & Maryam & Hamid El Kasri
11) Bayerma - Maâlem Hamida Boussou & Band
12) Ouled Bambara - Maâlem Mustapha Bakbou & Band
13) Al Adda - Maâlem Mustapha Bakbou & Band
Continuing with my recent set of trance brotherhood music tapes from the Meknes area (after Aissawa and Gnawa), here's a tape of Hamadsha tunes. The performer is from Fez, but I picked up the tape in Meknes in '99.
The Hamadsha are followers of Sidi Ali ben Hamdush, a saint whose shrine is in the Jbel Zerhun mountainous area north of Fez and Meknes. They specialize in working with people possessed by the notorious jinniya Lalla Aisha. The Gnawa also perform music for Aisha's trances, and it is derived from the 5/4 melodies heard here. (Gnawa versions of these tunes, which they call "Hamdushiya", can be heard elsewhere on this blog.) Lalla Aisha is usually identified as Aisha Qandisha, but this is contested by some, including the performer featured on this tape.
The performer, Abderrahim Amrani, is the muqaddem of a Fez branch of the brotherhood as well as a versatile musician proficient in a number of genres. See yala.fm for his biography (and some questionable pop versions of Moroccan trance tunes.) Or check out more tunes and video on the Fez Hamadsha website or on their MySpace page!
The music on this tape features the guinbri (not the large guinbri used by the Gnawa, but a smaller variety) and the large clay goblet drum known as gwal, along with clapping and singing. Not heard here is the ghaita oboe, which the Hamadsha use in some parts of their ceremony.
BTW - thanks for all your comments recently - I haven't had a chance to reply to all, but hope to do so soon. I do appreciate the feedback and the conversation!
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UPDATE - JAN 14, 2013 - Happy to say that Mr. Abderrahim Amrani has seen this blog post and shared more information about Lalla Aisha with followers of the blog! Please see here.
OK - enough with the Pokémon you say? Scraping the bottom of the stash? Au contraire! If chaabi Pokémon ain't your style, consider it an audio palate cleaning, a slice of picked ginger on your sushi platter, to get your ears ready for some full-on tagnawit sounds.
The late Hmida Boussou (of Casablanca, but with roots in Marrakech) was a serious, deep Gnawi maalem. His guinbri spoke volumes, and we're lucky to have some fantastic recordings of him in the Al Sur 5-disc Gnawa Leila series. He didn't record many commercial cassettes in Morocco. This is one of only a couple that I've seen. It appears to date from the 1980s, though it's hard to say for sure. I picked it up around '93, and it's a great one.
The guinbri is prominent in the mix but not distractingly so. One of my pet peeves with Gnawa recordings and electrified performances is that the guinbri is sometimes too far up front in the mix, destroying the dynamic tension between the sound of the guinbri and that of the incessant, clattering qraqeb. That being said, Maalem Hmida's playing is so subtle and consistent that it withstands being so "naked" in the mix. (This is also the case on disc 1 one of the Al Sur series.)
Discographic note: J-card lists the cassette publisher as "Sawt er Rbi3", but cassette shell reads Edition el Kawakib. Song titles, however, appear to be correct.
With a couple of exceptions (Sadie Fulani Hiriza and Wahyana Waye),
nothing here duplicates anything Maalem Hmida plays in the Al Sur series.
Mustapha was the first Gnawi I met in Marrakech. He's a fantastic, unsung guinbri player. He's nicknamed "Sam Essghir" (Little Sam) after the great Maalem Sam of Casablanca, as a tribute to his skill on the guinbri. As far as I know, this is Mustapha's only commercial recording. If what I'm told is correct, the session featured Mustapha on guinbri and most of the lead vocals, with Abdenbi Binizi and Ahmed Baska accompanying with clapping, qarqaba and chorus, and it was recorded on a couple of microphones to a cassette deck in the living room at Dar Nomades sometime in the late '80s or early '90s. The saturated lo-fi guinbri sound is a far cry from Night Spirit Masters, but, it has a helluva MOOD to it! And the tape includes one of the better renditions of the Hamdushiya suite that I've heard. One of my all-time fave Gnawa cassettes.
The running order of the cassette was kind of a mess - some songs were split onto 2 sides of the tape... I edited them back together and sequenced them in a way that seemed logical and that follows to some extent the titles listed on the sleeve.
1) Sala Nabina Mulay Muhammad
2) Baniya - Basha Hammou - Hammouda 3) Dutiwa - Ghumami
4) A Hiya Jat Lalla Aicha
5) Hamdushiya
6) Hadiya
7) Moulay Abdellah ben L-Houcine - Moulay Brahim
