Gnawa: Moroccan’Roll
 By Simon Webster

This is the first article in a series on Moroccan music. Although all the concepts touched on here equally to the rest of North Africa, I’ve put them under the Moroccan banner for the following reasons:
1: It’s the only country in North Africa whose music I really know.
2:Morocco is where historically musically, Arabia meets Africa.
3:The Moroccans love their music, which is incredible rich and diverse and deserves a bit of publicity! 

The first style of music we shall be looking at is that of the Gnawa fraternity.

The Gnawi are musicians  whose ancestors originated from West Africa and were brought to Morocco and the rest of North Africa as slaves and soldiers over five centuries ago. Gnawa people have created a distinct space in Moroccan society. They play a social and spiritual role  as well as perform entertainment and Gnawa music is spiritual music that is used for therapy. They claim to possess skills to cure insanity and free people from malign influences! However, in this instance, we’re more interested in what their music and specifically their rhythms have to offer us.

Firstly… why get into Gnawa music?

The recurring theme in these articles is the relevance of such style to western kit players, like ourselves.

1: Musical benefits.

Gnawa and a large chunk of Moroccan rhythms are mainly 6/8 or 12/8. As you’ll see later, some of them are also structured in a way that makes them sound simple but in reality turn our heads upside down. So, not only does this focus us on triplets in structures that challenge how we hear and feel rhythm in general. Finally, these triplets are ‘swung’ towards duple time in the same way that samba, the 16^th notes are swung towards triplet time. Ouch! 

2: The following musicians have discovered Gnawa Moroccan music over the years: Don Cherry, Miles Davis, Brian Jones, Jimmy Hendrix (well he had a house in southern Morocco!), Randy Weston, Pharoah Sanders, Bill Laswell, Jimmy Page, and Robert Plant… So, if it’s good for them… The annual Gnawa festival at Essouira, Southern Morocco is becoming hugely popular and French fusion bands like Orchestra National de Barbes or Gnawa Diffusion are bringing Gwana music to the mainstream. Gwana musicians such as Hassan Hakmoun, who has been living and working for years in New York are also making careers in their own right. So, it’s all happening out there. 

The line-up… 

   M’allem: leader and lead vocalist. 

   Guimbri or hajouz-jouz (the smallest version): a three-stringed African bass lute has a distinctive and very percussive sound.  

   Karkaba: metallic castenets or clappers; loud and played in a section. They are the grove machines with set patterns and no improvisation but with incredible drive and power.  

   Backing vocals and hand claps ‘rach’d’: very important elements of Gnawa music and make up a large part of the group. All Moroccans get  a sound like a wood block when clapping there hands and this is a national technique.

 Karkaba rhythm….

Look at examples 1 and 2. The basic Gnawa groove played on the karkabas is between the two! However, this IS a triplet rhythm so we are going to start with Example 1 and play nice round triplets on our snare or knees, adding in the pulse with a foot when we feel like it. Easy! 

   Now let’s “square off” the triplet by playing ‘a’, the third one of each set of three, early. This brings it close to ‘b’ in Example 2, the duple time equivalent. But, as the other two triplets are still in there original triplet position, the figure remains ‘triplety’. See?  

  This re-organisation gives us more room at the end of each set of triplets which means we have more time to drive the whole rhythm forward and play systematically ‘in front of the beat’ , but without speeding up! As with samba, this elasticity creates extra tension, swing and drive in the music.

 Now, all that’s left is to go and explore Gnawa music and find some Karkaba to listen to. More of this to follow. Have fun!