Paco Abderrahmane - T'hayyer A Moul al Hal (new rip, remix, remaster)

Here's new digitization of one of my favorite Gnawa cassettes. I shared a version of this back in 2011. I recently obtained a new copy of the tape and a new cassette deck too, so I thought I'd try to improve the sound compared to the earlier version. 

This is an album by Paco Abderrahmane (of Nass el Ghiwane, as the j-card points out). It features 4 songs from the Gnawa repertoire. See my original post to hear me sing the praises of the instrumentation and ensemble.

A couple of things strike me upon listening to this album again. 

1) Paco's singing. It's completely unrestrained and I love it - he reaches for notes and doesn't always hit them, but I'll take his conviction and energy on every failed attempt over a smooth restrained performance any day of the week. 

2) The swing of the guinbri. The way Paco's guinbri lines sit on the beat FEELS different from what I hear from players of the Marrakech school (Boussou, Baqbou, Sam, Baska, et al. ), but I find a similarity with the feel of Mahmoud Guinia's playing - so maybe it's an Essaouira thing. Like maybe they're playing more on top of the beat where the Marrakech players play a little behind it. I may be completely wrong... 

I may also have been wrong to try to remix this cassette. The tracks on side A were recorded or mastered very hot, and the vocals max out in the refrains - even when I split the stems and tried to work on the vocal sound there was not much I could do for the distorted passages. I tried to give some more definition to the guinbri and the tbel barrel drum, but it was a challenge since they exist in a similar frequency range. (I think that's one reason those instruments are not played together very often.)

Anyway, I'm tired of tweaking and re-tweaking the eq, imaging, and other settings. I'm an amateur engineer, so this has been, shall we say, a "learning opportunity" for me. I'm happy with some of the results, and meh with other parts of it. So what I'll do is share my remix as well as a raw rip of the cassette (which is at least an improvement over my 2011 rip). And the music is still fantastic, whichever version you may prefer. 

Raw cassette rip of track 1 (below) for comparison with remix version (above in YouTube clip), if you're interested in that kind of thing:

Best of luck to your teams of choice in the World Cup, or boycott the whole damn thing if you are so inclined.

Thayyer A Moul Al Hal Mâ  تحير امول الحال مع
Paco Abderrahmane باكو عبد الرحمن
(Nass el Ghiwane ناس لاغيوان )
Edition Sonya Disque cassette ESD 322 سونيا ديسك
1993 + Moroccan Tape Stash Remix 2026

A1 Subaîi السباعي
A2 Lyaburi اليابوري
B1 Damman Lbled ضمان البلاد
B2 Lâtfa Lillah العطفة لله

Raw Rip: FLAC | 320
Remix/Remaster: FLAC | 320

3 hours of Gnawa music from 1966

Those of you with a taste for field recordings may enjoy perusing the online collection of CREM (Centre de Recherche en Ethnomusicologie), housing the audio archives of the CNRS and the Musée de l’Homme. Much of this vast audio archive of commercial and unpublished recordings is available for online listening.

I'm currently enjoying a remarkable collection of recordings made by one Mohammed Aït Youssef in Marrakech in 1966, featuring over 3 hours of Gnawa music:

http://archives.crem-cnrs.fr/archives/collections/CNRSMH_I_1968_021/

The online documentation does not indicate the name of the performer, but I believe it is the Gnawi Ahmed ben Lahcen.

He can be heard in some of Cafe Matich's YouTube uploads of recordings from Marrakech's Djemaa el Fna plaza:



It is certainly the same Gnawi that is heard in Gerard Kremer's recordings for Arion (released 1975):



Some of the recordings in the CNRS collection appear to have been made in the Djemaa el Fna plaza. Others, perhaps not - it's difficult to say. At any rate, it's a great collection of recordings - a lot of Ouled Bambara and Negsha songs, some with clapping, some with qarqaba, a few tracks of drumming and qarqaba-ing. (Almost no mluk trance songs, though.) There are also a few tracks of odds and ends. 08-03 features the bells of Djemaa el Fna water sellers. 07-01 is a drum and qarqaba song featuring the ismkhan (also known as âbid chleuh - Berber-speaking Gnawa who have a repertoire completely separate from that of the more well-known Arabophone Gnawa), and 07-02 is entitled "Solo de flûte Gnawa". The latter track sounds to me like an instance of the Soussi Berber style of âwad flute. Perhaps it's a Gnawi musician who doubles on flute - I've never heard of a discrete Gnawi flute tradition or repertoire, but the world is full of musical surprises, so perhaps I'm wrong!

I couldn't find any information about the researcher Mohamed Ait Youssef, what sort of research he was doing, or how his recordings ended up in the CNRS archive. The archive contains other recordings of his dating from1965 and 1968. These recordings, also from Marrakech, feature several different genres (as well as a few more Gnawa tracks). Whatever his story may have been, it's wonderful that he left us such extensive recordings, and that CNRS has shared them online.

CNRS Collection: Maroc, Marrakech; Musique de confrérie. Enregistrements sonores inédits réalisés par Mohammed Aït Youssef au Maroc (Marrakech), en 1966: http://archives.crem-cnrs.fr/archives/collections/CNRSMH_I_1968_021/

Ghaita Jbaliya - The Northern Oboes

More sounds from northern Morocco this week. It's Ghaita Jbaliya:

• ghaita = oboe (shawm, double reed instrument...)
• Jbaliya = of the Jbala people/region

Oboe and drum ensembles are found all over North Africa - it's a perfect ensemble for outdoors, where the shrill piercing tones of the ghaita (or zorna in Algeria and further east) announce the presence of festivities. The typical accompanying drum is the tbel barrel drum, as shown below. (The bendir pictured on the j-card above seems to be a mistake.)



The Stash has previously featured some ghaita music in a post on Aissawa music here. Ghaita and tbel groups can be found all over Morocco, and the particular music played depends on the surrounding regional traditions. Thus ghaita jbaliya features melodies and rhythms particular to the Jbala region. Dig, for example the characteristic 9/8 rhythmic pattern that opens track 1 (embedded at bottom of page).

Though ghaita jbaliya is a regional folk tradition, it was, curiously, one of the first Moroccan musical genres to be exported and consumed in the West, courtesy of the Master Musicians of Jajouka and the Bryon Gysin/Brian Jones/Rolling Stones connection. (See Philip Schuyler's article "Joujouka/Jajouka/Zahjoukah. Moroccan Music and Euro-American Imagination" for the definitive analysis of that story/phenomenon.)

By the way, if you've wondered about the images of rifle-wielding turbaned horesmen seen on this cassette and others (e.g., here, here, and here), that's a representation of tborida (also called "fantasia"). It's a type of performance that takes place at tribal gatherings (moussem-s), and sometimes at very big weddings or other social gatherings. In my understanding, it stands as a symbol for Moroccan Arab rural-ness.

And lastly, I love the cassette imprint of "Sawt Bouhlal" (the voice of Bouhlal) - Bouhlal is a mountain in the region of Al Hoceima (n the Jbala region, of course).

Mnuâat Ghaita Jbaliya (Sawt Bouhlal 004)
excerpt of Track 1 (of 4)

Get it here.

Alan Lomax's Moroccan Tape Stash

 

Well, his Moroccan stash is but a tiny tiny pinch of shake from his huge stash of field recordings. His recordings of American folk music are, of course, the most famous, but he also did his share of international recordings during his many years of research.

Association for Cultural Equity and the Alan Lomax Archive recently went live with over 800 hours of sound recordings as well as video and photographs from Lomax's collection. Perhaps the mother of all tape stashes!

I had no idea Lomax had recorded in Morocco! I'm just starting to dip into this collection, and I'll try to link to anything that particularly catches my ear.

First question I had, of course... is there any Gnawa music? Indeed, there is one short piece recorded in the Djemaa el Fna in Marrakech - it's an excerpt from "Negsha".

Explore the Moroccan collection here.
Explore the entire audio collection here.
Or start at the main menu to get to photographs, video, and other resources.

---

UPDATE:
I found 2 more short Gnawa tracks, in Lomax's recordings from Fez. They are from outdoor processional âada repertoire, thus feature the tbola rather than the guinbri. The recordings were made at the moussem of Moulay Idriss, and include recordings of Aissawa and Hamadcha as well!

Post-Miloud Moussem Mayhem Music from Meknes - Aissawa!

In the weeks following the Eid al Miloud, pilgrimage celebrations (moussem-s) are held all over Morocco at the shrines of local awliya saints. Possibly the biggest of these celebrations is the moussem in Meknes for L-Hadi ben Aissa, eponym of the Aissawa brotherhood. Pilgrims from across the region and across the country descend on Meknes for a 2 weeks of devotion and renewal, and nights of trance music.

Here are 2 tapes of Aissawa music I picked up in Meknes ca. '99. Unlike the released CDs of Aissawa music available in da West (featuring groups from Meknes, Marrakech, and Fes), these tapes make no pretense of presenting a balanced overview of the Aissawa ritual. That is, they don't include any of the lovely sung poetry in honor of the Hadi ben Aissa that would typically open a ritual performance. They cut straight to the chase, hitting the ground running with with blaring ghaita oboes and pounding tbel drums!

I'm not familiar enough with Aissawa music to know if these tunes are from the trance repertoire or from the street/processional repertoire. Whichever it is, these are some serious long jams - the group riffs it non-stop for 3+ sides of these 2 volumes:


Most of Vol 2 side 2 is taken up with a suite of melodies in 5/4 - it sounds like the rhythm used by the Hamadsha brotherhood.


If anyone can identify any of the melodies or the context of these recordings, please let me know!

At any rate, this is definitely a live performance - either the musicians, the microphone, or all of them are in motion - the oboes and drums change places in the mix constantly during the recording. Add to that some weird phasing that carries on through most of the tape, just the right amount of crowd noise, chattering and occasional chanting, and you've got an unintentionally awesome Brian Jones Presents the Pipes of Pan at Joujouka vibe!

Get it here and here.