There was no further issue. This 24th Essaouira Gnawa World Music Festival, held June 22-24 to coincide with the start of summer, marked a return after a few years to its usual format on Morocco’s Atlantic coast, taking place next to the old fortress of Mogador and with a less ambitious edition – the 2022 edition – spread over several cities in Morocco. Because Essaouira is undoubtedly where Gnawa belongs, this genre that evokes the black music of the desert and has become the emblem of North Africa.
Rustic melodies of sacred origin consisting of prayers in repeated verses and accompanied by their performers with traditional instruments such as guembri (wooden and leather bass) and krakabs (metal castanets) are called gnawa. The maâlems (masters) leave their instrument to their students as a ritual of continuity of spiritual tradition in the extended family.
Thus, from the prayers of hope of the slaves in the caravans that crossed the Sahara from Timbuktu to the Mediterranean Sea, a word was taken that could already be heard in the 16th century and has come down to our days thanks to the chanting of the Sufi brotherhoods fraternal. To God: the Gnawa (presumably rooted in the word Guinea), a rhythm that has held the title of “Intangible Heritage of Humanity” by UNESCO since late 2019.
Essaouira is undoubtedly where Gnawa belongs, this genre that evokes the black music of the desert and has become the emblem of North Africa.
According to this patrimonial inscription, the “new era” of the festival, founded in 1998, begins, determined to “resist, to innovate and to surprise”, because the space expresses “a community of cultures”, in the words of co-founder and producer Neila taz But beyond the satisfaction of its creators, it is true that the merits of this annual mega-gathering are recognized and recognized by the public – which is growing in number every year – as well as by international musicians and cultural programmers from other countries, as well as by the neighbors themselves. It’s hard not to walk in the middle of Moulay Hassan Square, bustling with local families and people from all over the world singing in multiple languages, which the organizers estimate has reached 300,000 people this year.
hustle and bustle
Passes were sold out and the medina exhaled music in every corner ahead of the first of three days of music on the streets, in riads – traditional houses – and in sacred places in this fishing town some 400 kilometers south of Casablanca. The harbor of the screeching seagulls was a party again.
The music group Las Amazonas de África during their presentation at the Gnaoua and World Music Festival (Morocco) in June 2023. On loan from the Gnaoua and World Music Festival
The big foreign guest this year was the Cuban Elíades Ochoa, remembered for his participation in the album “Buena Vista Social Club”, who lived to be 77 hours before entering the main stage. Meanwhile, throughout the pedestrian souk, the younger crowd chanted the refrains of rising Belgian star Selah Sue. The young Moroccans prepared to dance fervently to the ska and chaâbi rock of the perennial Casablancas Hoba Hoba spirit, which several urban generations from the neighboring country protested in Dariya (Arabic Maghrebi dialect) and with distortion pedals accompanied .
However, the Guembri masters with their ensembles outnumbered them and led the open-air fusions and “intimate” meetings at Dar Souiri, Bayt Dakira or at Zaouia Issaoua, in long nights full of choreographic acrobatics and lilacs, as at the vigils the case is called. in trance. There were teachers of all generations, including the renowned Hamid El Kasri, Abdeslam Akikana, Houssam Gania, Mokhtar Guinea, Mohamed Kouyou, Omar Hayat or Najib Soudani, joined by younger talents and also teachers like Hind Ennaira and Asmaa Hamzaoui.
Those invited to the stage included the Amazons of Africa, a group of stars formed in 2014 from the merger of superdivas Mamani Keita, Oumou Sangaré and Mariam Doumbia, along with other powerful women of singing on the continent; the members of “Amagaba”, a drum group from Burundi; Argentine percussionist Minino Garay; among others the German guitarist Torsten de Winkel (also creator of the Bimbache Openart Festival on the island of El Hierro) and the Pakistani singer Faiz Ali Faiz.
The Amazons of Africa at the Essaouira Festival of Gnawa (Morocco), June 2023. Karim Tibari
Special mention should be made of the virtuous brothers of the Joubran Trio, Palestinian lute players who accompanied the poet Mahmoud Darwish in his recitals. This ensemble, belonging to a line of luthiers specializing in lutes, performed at a beautiful sunset on the terrace of Borj Bab Castle in Marrakech, where people were reciting Darwish’s love verses by heart. Speaking to this newspaper, Wissam Joubran, who carries on the luthier tradition of his father and grandfather, praised the will of the Maghrebi public in their dealings with the rest of the Arab world to the east, which he says does not correspond to the attention which is given from there from this corner of North Africa.
cultural diplomacy
As the former director of the International Festival of Carthage in Tunis, Imed Alibi, pointed out days ago on social networks, “Essaouira is an example of ‘nation branding’ in cultural diplomacy” and “proof that a festival of … “A southern country with a vision for the future can have a positive impact on the economy of the city and the country itself.” The small Moroccan city of 70,000 people has seen its population “sixfold” making it a privileged tourist destination. Alibi concluded that “a strong identity and a long-term vision (rather than just a series of events) are the foundation of cultural politics.”
Essaouira is an example of nation branding or country branding in cultural diplomacy” and “proof that a festival from a forward-thinking southern country can have a positive impact on the economy of the city and the country itself.”
Imed Alibi, former director of the Carthage International Festival in Tunis
Behind this “long-term vision” are some of the city’s favorite sons, including André Azoulay, economist and adviser to Morocco’s last two monarchs, from a Berber Jewish family in the region and a sponsor of the festival for 25 years. It was precisely Azoulay who, at the conclusion of the human rights forum that accompanies the music program every year, recalled the biography of Essaouira from his own childhood when it was the “capital of hippie civilization”.
At this point, Azoulay said he understood the “universality of Gnawa,” its “porosity and intimacy” when he heard “the recordings of jazz greats” in the ’70s. “I inherited from them that the heart of the blues was in the Guembri, when I thought that place belonged to the double bass,” he affirmed.
With the emergence of African-American jazz musicians seeking their roots in the gnawa, and particularly in the jazz clubs of cities like Rabat or Tangier, in the 1960s, the spiritual ostracism of the gnawa had given way to an inclusive celebration of bringing “that part of ourselves” into its to integrate a fraternal dimension, according to the organizer of the festival. In his opinion, the DNA of Gnawa remains the same in 2023, although there was “one reality before Essaouira and another after” for the genre.
The Tangier political scientist Hisham Aïdi, professor at Columbia University (USA), spoke of the “Essaouira model” at the forum for reflection on identities and belonging. He explained that this is an “experiment of self-identity in cultural exchange” thanks to which “Gnawa music is no longer stigmatized as the cultural face of the Maghreb in the world”.
In this context, Aïdi also mentioned the relaunch of the cultural magazine Souffles as a pan-African platform that wants to honor the spirit of the original publication, created by the poet Abdellatif Laabi in Rabat in March 1966 and which in the years disappeared from lead. The intent in this new phase is to connect researchers living in the United States and Latin America with those who remain in Morocco.
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