It's Been A Weird Year - You Deserve Some Great Gnawa Music from Essaouira

A Gnawa offering to round out the strange year that was 2021. Here's a lovely album from Mokhtar & Zaida Gania. Mokhtar and Zaida are the brother and sister of the late mâalems Mahmoud and Abdellah Gania, and I believe they are the last surviving children of Mâalem Boubker Gania. 

Zaida is a mqaddma ritual leader in Gnawa ceremonial life, and of course grew up in a family of Gnawa musicians and ritual practitioners. In addition to performing music with her male Gnawi family members, she also leads all-female haddarat percussion groups:

Mâalem Mokhtar has performed in traditional and fusion Gnawa settings. His singing voice is deeper and more resonant than that of his late brother Mahmoud. And he plays this badass guinbri:

The tracks of this album feature an appealing variety of textures. Gnawa music in its traditional form stays pretty uniform in terms of texture (a guinbri, some qarqabas, and some male call/response vocals). It's a great texture, and sometimes that's exactly what the doctor ordered. But sometimes it's nice to change things up too. On this album you get: songs with added percussion (A2, and especially B5), songs with Zaida singing lead (A1, B1, B2, B5) or along with the male chorus (A1, A3, A5, B4), and songs with a tenor sax (A4, B2). 

Female and male voices together in Gnawa music don't always work for me, but in this instance the combination sounds great - perhaps the fact that it's family makes the blend organic. Men and women of the Gania family can also be heard singing together on Maâlem Mahmoud's 1994 album with Pharoah Sanders The Trance of Seven Colors, and the blend there is likewise wonderful.

The use of tenor sax on this album also hearkens to The Trance of Seven Colors. In fact, it's the only other recording I can think of that features a full Gnawa group augmented only by a saxophone. Typically when you hear a saxophone with Gnawa, you are also hearing other instruments like a drum kit, keyboards, guitars and other percussion. I wish I knew who was playing the sax here - the approach is nice, and somewhat reminscent of the way Pharoah played with Mahmoud's group.

Mokhtar remains active as one of the elders of Gnawa music in Essaouira. His performance with his nephew Houssam was one of many highlights of the huge Gnawa concert that was broadcast on Christmas day on Moroccan TV. The concert, which was filmed in Essaouira, featured dozens of Gnawa mâalems and koyos from across Morocco. You can watch the entire show, which was very good, on YouTube:

Thanks to all of you who continue to visit Moroccan Tape Stash after all these years. May 2022 bring goodness and joy to you all, and may humans across the planet join hearts, hands, and minds in love and mutual respect to confront the formidable challenges we continue to face.

El Moukhtar & Zaida Kania المختار و زايدة كانية
Azza Production AP-03/03
2003

A1 Tsarkou Wallah Kobayni تسركو والله كوبايني
A2 Foufou Danba فوفو دنبا
A3 Jabriyi جابريي
      Moulandi مولاندي
A4 Jankriyi خانكريي
A5 Barkiou باركيو
      Kobayli Bralf كوبايلي برالف
B1 Yallah Foulane Essaadi يالله فولان السعدي
B2 Yallah Yamani يالله يماني

B3 Sidi Sma Samaoui
B4 Allah Allah Samaoui الله الله السماوي
B5 Allah Allah Moulana الله الله مولانا

320 | FLAC

4 Hours from a Gnawa Lila in Essaouira - Said Boulhimas and Ahmed Baqbou

Here's a nice recording from a lila ceremony held at the Zawiya of Sidna Bilal in Essaouira featuring Maalem Ahmed Baqbou from Marrakech and Maalem Said Boulhimas from Essaouira. This was uploaded by YouTube user chahidessafa. There's so much Gnawa music available on YouTube, it's a bit overwhelming so I rarely dip into it. But I'm a sucker for lila tapes, especially when they feature great players like these. This is certainly not a studio quality recording, but it's not bad and has a decent balance between singing, guinbri, and qraqeb. And the great performance, ambiance, and live interaction more than compensate for any flaws in audio fidelity. I've put the videos into a playlist that follows the order of the performance:



The recording goes as far as the Musawi portion of the lila. It features the particular Essaouira version of Sidi Musa which is different from the version played in other Gnawa locales. (A lovely version of this piece is featured as the title track of Houssam Gania's album Mosawi Swiri, released earlier this year by Hive Mind Records - still available for download here.)

I've put together a few other playlists of YouTube audio from Gnawa lilas. If you're in the mood for more, check them out here and here and here.

Sorry for the long absence. I'll have a new old tape up for you to enjoy in the next day or so. Hope you're all doing OK out there. Strange times these are indeed. Looking forward to a time when we can again hear, play, and dance to music in rooms together.

Houssam Gania - get a copy of his new cassette before they're gone!

Houssam Gania is the son of the late Gnawi mâalem Mahmoud Guinia, and a fine guinbri player in his own right. Like his father, his playing isn't flashy, but is deeply in the pocket.

Hive Mind Records in the UK released this new album by Houssam on cassette (!!!!!) a couple of months back. The j-card design is a lovely homage to the Tichkaphone cassettes of his father. The album contains a great version of the Essaouira version of "Sidi Musa" - a different flavor than you hear in Marrakech, Casablanca, or elsewhere.



As of today there are only 10 copies of the cassette left at Bandcamp. You will still be able to download digitally thereafter, but why not get a copy for your own tape stash!!

Huge props to Marc over at Hive Mind for this release, as well as for the vinyl releases of Mahmoud Guinia and Moulay Ahmed el Hassani over the last couple of years.

Order you copy HERE!

Mahmoud Guinia - Soirée au Canada

Hello friends - I meant to have this up a few weeks ago, but have become caught in some writer's cramp. Rather than wait for the cramp to uncramp, I'll just share this now, without my usual ramblings. It's a live recording from a concert by the late, great Gnawi mâllem Mahmoud Guinia. Palm Wine posted a (now deleted) version of this tape a few years ago and said it was obtained in Morocco in 1978. That would seem to make it quite early in the discography (tape-ography?)

This is a different sort of live album than his Fikriphone debut, which was recorded live at a lila ceremony. Audience-performer interaction and expectations are quite different at this sit-down concert in Canada. (The announcements at the end of track 1 seem to indicate that it's some sort of folk festival or concert series.) Despite the lack of trancers (as far as I can tell), Mâllem Mahmoud delivers the goods, providing some excellent riffing during these long tunes for the assembled audience.

Yala features a shorter version of this album here. Yala's version removes a couple of warts in the performance, namely the falling down of the guinbri's bridge at the end of track 2 (the track is missing altogether) and again at the end of track 3 (the track fades out).

I've edited down track 7, which originally included a couple minutes of the same music copied and spliced to extend its length. If you want the original "extended remix", Yala's got it here.

El Maalem Mahmoud Gania - Soiree Au Canada (La Voix El Maarif 393)
01) Sheshiyat Bambara (v1)
02) Sheshiyat Bambara (v2)
03) Fulani ya Baba ya Sidi
04) Fofo Denba
05) Kommwi Baba Kommwi - Allah ya Mimoun Marhaba
06) Jilali Boualem
07) Shabakurya

Get it all here.

The Master Has Set Down His Guinbri - Mâllem Mahmoud Guinia (1951-2015)

Word from Morocco today is that the great Gnawi master Mahmoud Guinia has passed on. I haven't seen this from any official news sources, but Twitter and Facebook are abuzz with posts about it, and I've seen no contradicting notices. The Gnaoua Festival has tweeted it. It appears, alas, that another great one has left us.

Mahmoud Guinia was, I believe, the first musician to become famous across Morocco as a performer of Gnawa music. Paco Abderrahmane may have been the first nationally famous Gnawa musician, but his fame came from his work with the folk/fusion/revival music of Nass el Ghiwane, not from his work in traditional Gnawa music. Though Mahmoud has engaged in fusion projects over the years, his fame was based on his work in the Gnawa ritual tradition, his many recordings of Gnawa music, and his participation at the national level representing the Gnawa tradition.

A mâllem (ritual master) from an established Gnawi family in Essaouira, Mahmoud was among the first musicians to release commercial recordings of music from the Gnawa ritual repertoire, and he remains perhaps the most prolific. His earliest cassettes were on the Fikriphone label out of Agadir. Later albums were distributed nationally on Tichkaphone out of Casablanca, and on many other labels over the years. There was no such thing as a Gnawa album before he began making them. His recorded work has run the gamut of what a Gnawa album could be - straight-up recordings live at rituals, studio recordings in a traditional vein or in a fusion vein, recordings from the "popular" side of the repertoire or from the heavy trance side. And those are just the Moroccan releases!

Here is a cassette from (I believe) the 1980s. It does not announce itself as a live album, but side A ends with applause and an announcement in French that the performers are about to take 5-10 minutes for a cigarette break. The recording may or may not be related to a "live album" released on the same label, which I will share in the near future. (Was going to up it today, but there are a few ethnomusicological thoughts pinging around my head, so I'll sort those out and share with you soon.)

Also, can I say how much I love cassettes that come in cardboard boxes! Look - you can stack it on any side and you still can read the artist's name!

Lemâalem M. Guinya (La Voix El Maarif 233)
01) Bunga Bunga Bulila
02) Soyo Soyo Kamilana
03) Sidi Mhamed ya Subaï
04) Ye Sudani a Bangara - Amara Musayi
05) Lalla Imma ya Sudani
06) Berrma Nana Soutanbi

Get it here.

[Note - The title of this post was inspired by le360.ma, who posted an article earlier today entitled "Mahmoud Guinea a déposé son guembri: Adieu, Maître"]

Most Psychedelic Gnawa Tape Ever

Before Chaabane gives way to Ramadan, here's a good one - one of the strangest Gnawa cassettes I've ever found. Picked this up around 2001 in Essaouira. Nothing about the j-card gives a clue about the psychedelic grooves contained within.

Sounds drop in and out: Indian tabla and bol drum syllables, jaw harp, darbuka, English recitation, guinbri, gong, digeridoo, and various other sounds. But the texture never seems cluttered - all sounds have plenty of space to breathe. I'd love to know more about this album and who collaborated on it! (Especially, who in the world is doing the English recitation!)

Mahmoud's singing is fantastic - relaxed, often in the lower register. Some of the tracks are built around songs from the Gnawa repertoire (tracks 1, 5 and 6), while others appear to be original to this project. The English recitations are riffs on the Arabic lyrics (or vice versa). And ever think you'd hear Mahmoud sing in fus7a (Standard Arabic)? Check track 8!

Despite the fact that the serial number on the cassette shell matches that of the j-card, none of the listed song titles have anything to do with the songs on the cassette. Track titles here are my own:

1)  Jilali Bouâlem

2)  Lâayoune Dahika
3)  Jwedi ya Jwedi
4)  Allah Yuhibb Alkurama
5)  Fofo Denba
6)  Berrma Nana Soutanbi
7)  Alhubb Wahid Wa Eddunya Wahida
8)  Africa Muwahhada
9)  Alhaqiqa
10) Al Umm

I hope to drop another cassette before Ramadan starts. I may not post at all during Ramadan, as I'll be fasting as well as traveling. In case you don't hear from me between now and the end of Ramadan, here's wishing blessing, grace, and peace upon you all!

Gnawadelica here.

Festival d'Essaouira

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

Dig it here.

More Vintage Mahmoud Guinia

Here's a couple more vintage cassettes of Maalem Mahmoud Guinia. These are released on the Fikriphone label out of Agadir. The other Fikriphone cassette I posted of Mahmoud (FP25) was purported to be his first commercial release, so I'm guessing these are also quite old. Unlike that album, which appears to have been recorded live at a lila, these tapes are studio recordings and feature a tam-tam drum in addition to the guinbri and qraqeb.

I'm uploading them together because the track names on the j-cards don't match the songs on either cassette - some songs listed on 42 appear on 41 and vice versa, some songs listed don't appear at all, and some songs on the cassettes aren't listed at all.

Here's my track listing:
FP41:
1) Allah Allah Bulila
2) Yumali Ye Yumala
3) La ilaha illa Llah
4) Fulani Baba Sidi


FP42:
1) Ya Sudani Bangara Bangara
2) Lalla Maymouna Sultan Gnawiya
3) Lalla Fatima Zahra - Shay Llah Dar Dammana
4) 'Awwenuna Rijal Allah Baba L'Arabi
5) Soyo Soyo Kamilana

Get 'em here.

PS - audio sample coming soon - divshare upload seems to be down...

Noujoum Essaouira - back in the day (or night) with Maalem Omar Hayat

Well I'm pretty sure it's Maalem Omar Hayat here. One of the top Gnawi maalem-s of Essaouira. I haven't seen any other commercial recordings by him, though he is a perennial at the Gnawa Festival.

It's a small-group session - sounds like just 3 musicians. I can't figure out what percussion is being used here. It's definitely not qraqeb. Sounds a little like a hi-hat, but I think more likely it's someone using spoons on a tea tray, or some other such improvised utensils. Pretty mellow vibe.

The spine reads: Lila ma3 Noujoum Essaouira / Lila ma3 Gnaoua fi Essaouira (Night with the Stars of Essaouira / Night with Gnawa in Essaouira). This ostensibly refers to the Gnawa lila ceremony, though the songs are all over the place (in terms of what parts of the ceremony they are pulled from), and the vibe is nothing like a lila. Non-Gnawa (including festival promoters and cassette/CD companies) are pretty loose with the term lila. The several times I attended the festival in Essaouira, there were events billed as "lila-s" held away from the main stage. These were not lila ceremonies, but rather small concerts featuring Gnawa groups (without the ubiquitous jazz-fusions that occurred on the main stages).

Even with the misleading lila reference, the tape is pretty enjoyable - an interesting selection of songs, and strong playing from Maalem Omar.

1) Track 1: La ilaha illa Llah / Mulay 'Abdelqader / Ara ara chaw / Tilku lila / Chabakro
2) Track 2: Bunga Bunga Bulila / Jabuna / Marhaba Baba Mimoun / Lalla Meryem Chelha / Moulati Fatima / Casa Casa ya Tungra
3) Lalla Zohra / Majdouba Lalla Rqiya

4) Budali Sidi Rahhal

Get it here.

Mahmoud Guinia - "First Album" - Live Lila Recording

The cassette seller in Essaouira from whom I purchased this tape told me this was the first commercial recording released by the Gnawi maalem Mahmoud Guinia. I'm guessing that puts it in the late '70s or early '80s.

As I wrote previously, Maalem Mahmoud has released scores of recordings over the years. This one is quite different from all other recordings I've heard by him. It appears to have been recorded at a lila ceremony, and it's a great lila recording. I've had the pleasure of attending a couple of lila-s where Maalem Mahmoud worked, and I thought his playing at the ceremonies was very deep - more interesting than what he does in studio recordings. This tape gets to that place.

No studio production values to be found here - sounds like someone just set up a couple of mics and let them catch the action as it unfolds. The mics are well placed - a strong, punchy guinbri sound, and, importantly, strong qarqaba sound as well. Sometimes in Gnawa recordings the qraqeb get mixed too far down - i prefer it where both are really driving each other to deeper grooving, and that's definitely in effect here.

You get the beginning of the trance portion of the ceremony: the relentless crescendo of the Ftih ar-Rahba, all of the White suite (Salihin), and the beginning of the Multicolored (Bu Derbala)

1) Ftih ar Rahba
2) Hammadi
3) Sala Nabina (Salihin)
4) Jilala
5) Jilali Bualam / Jilali Dawi Hali / Mulay Abdelqader
6) Allah ya Bu Derbala

Get it here

BTW - track titles are mine, not what's written on the j-card.

Mahmoud Guinia with Insane Drum Kit (a.k.a. Mahmoud Guinia and Warren Beatty)

M'allem Mahmoud Guinia of Essaouira was for years the most well-known Gnawa musician inside and outside of Morocco. (In recent years, Hamid el-Kasri of Rabat has become the Gnawa musician most often seen on national TV broadcasts in Morocco). He has released scores of cassettes and CDs in Morocco, some featuring the traditional ensemble of guinbri and qraqeb, some incorporating additional instruments and textures into the mix.

For this session, M'allem Mahmoud brings a full Gnawa ensemble with guinbri, qraqeb and spirited choral responses, and adds a funky trap drummer who never, ever stops. Ever. Don't look for subtlety here. This tape hits the ground running and maintains a sprint from start to finish.

Also, don't look here for tunefulness. Other than at the end of track 3 (for the imported Aissawi version of "Lagnawi Baba Mimoun"), the vocals are never in tune with the guinbri. Between this and the in-your-face hi-hat and drum rolls from the anonymous trap drummer, this tape might be a rough ride for some listeners. But Mahmoud's singing (despite the tuning issues) is high-spirited and energetic, as is that of the choral responders. And the drum kit, while punctuating incessantly, is always right in the pocket. It's a blast!

The songs on this tape are drawn mainly from a repertoire the Gnawa call "Soussiya". Soussi is a Moroccan rhythm characterized by alternating duple and triple subdivisions of a 6/8 measure. It's the most popular and ubiquitous rhythm across Morocco. At the end of Gnawa derdeba ceremonies, musicians segue from the trance repertoire to "popular" (i.e., not part of the ritual repertoire) songs in this rhythm, and anybody that is still present and awake (since this usually occurs long after dawn) is welcome to get up and dance. The first couple songs of track 1 belong to the Yellow trance repertoire, and the rest of it is an incessant Soussi jam. Tracks 2 and 4 are also Soussi songs, while track 3 includes trancing songs.

I heard this tape originally in '92. (I believe my traveling companion JH bought it and later gifted it to me.) The j-card reads only "The Gnawi Mahmoud Guinia". The smiling, bespectacled tambourine man, whom we assumed was the drummer on the session, is not identified. JH dubbed him Warren Beatty, and for us this became the Mahmoud Guinia and Warren Beatty album.

Tracks (titles from my transcription, not from j-card):

1. Lalla Mira - Moulati Fatma - Soussi - Malika - Moulay Abdellah Cherif - Bouya Ribu - Lemwima Hada Mektab - Llahi blik ma blani - Selliw 'ala Nnbi - Llah Llah Nabina
2. Tijaniya
3. Jilali Dawi Hali - Lagnawi Baba Mimoun
4. Salbani 'Awju Koman 'Aliya - Lalla L'arosa - Mulay Abdellah Cherif - Lalla Fatima Zohra - Lahbib Sidi Rasul Allah - Sla u Salam 'alik a ya Taha

Get it here.