Gnawa Music Today
During the last few decades, Gnawa music has been modernizing and thus becoming more profane. However, there are still many lilas organized privately, which conserves the music's sacred, spiritual status.
Within the framework of the Gnaoua World Music Festival of Essaouira ("Gnaoua and Musics of the World"), the Gnawa play in a profane context with slight religious or therapeutic dimensions. Instead, in this musical expression of their cultural art, they share stages with other musicians coming from the four corners of the world.
As a result, Gnawa music has taken a new direction by fusing its core spiritual music with similar genres like jazz, blues, reggae, and hip-hop. Every summer for four days in June, the Festival welcomes famous musicians that come to participate, exchange and mix their own music with Gnawa music, creating one of the largest public festivals in Morocco as well as one of the best jam sessions on the planet. Since its debut in 1998, the free concerts have drawn a festival audience that has grown from 20,000 visitors to over 200,000 in 2006 including 10,000 visitors from around the world.
Past participants have included Randy Weston, Adam Rudolph, The Wailers, Pharoah Sanders, Keziah Jones, Omar Sosa, Doudou N'Diaye Rose, and the Italian trumpet player Paolo Fresu.
There are also projects such as "The Sudani Project", a jazz/gnawa dialogue in collaboration between saxophonist/composer Patrick Brennan, Gnawi maâlem Najib Sudani, and drummer/percussionist/vocalist Nirankar Khalsa. Brennan has pointed out that the metal qraqeb and gut bass strings of the guembri parallel the cymbal and bass in jazz sound.
In the 1990s young musicians from various backgrounds and nationalities started to form modern Gnawa bands. Gnawa Impulse from Germany is an example. These groups offer a rich mix of musical and cultural backgrounds, fusing their individual influences into a collective sound. They have woven elements of rap, reggae, jazz and rai into a vibrant musical patchwork.
These projects incorporating Gnawa and Western musicians are essentially Gnawa fusions.
Read more about this topic: Gnawa Music
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