Biography

Gnawa culture is still alive and potent. It mixes the animist beliefs of black Africans who were brought to Morocco centuries ago as captives or slaves together with the Sufism they found there. In recent decades, gnawa’s rolling hypnosis of clattering metal castanets (karakab), deep booming bass lute (guenbri), and searing call-and-response vocals has seduced a host of western musicians: Randy Weston, Jimi Hendrix, Frank Zappa, Robert Plant, to name just a few. Now gnawa seems to be everywhere, from the hip bars of downtown New York to the banlieues of France and the stages of music festival around the world - another musical gift of African origin to mankind, like reggae, samba or the blues. And it’s all thanks to people like Aziz Sahmaoui. Aziz grew up in the medina or old town of Marrakesh, close to the famous Djema’a el Fna square, an urban landscape that pulsates day and night to the drums and karakab of the gnawi. He remembers his father taking him to the Marrakech’s famous Festival of Traditional Arts and being blown away by the beauty of Moroccan music, the astonishing intricacy and variety of its rhythms. He moved around as a youth, spending time in Berber country near Agadir, or up in the far north east, by the Mediterranean, his knowledge of rhythm and percussion deepening at every stage.