Maroc - Mlouk, Gnawa and World Music Festival

Hamzaoui, Asma

C560283

Since the end of the 19th century, the search to identify the origin of the Gnawa community and its ritual practices relied on a loose phonetic premise found in research devoted to the cult of North African saints and the slave trade in Islamic regions. Maurice Delafosse (1870-1926) had speculated that the Berber expression akal-n-iguinaouen (“land of the Blacks”) could have given rise to the words “Guinea” and “Gnawa” by phonetic similarity and that “Gnawa” could therefore mean a “black” person, or someone “from the land of the Blacks”. In the absence of conclusive historical data, this phonetic relationship gave rise to the hypothetical Sub-Saharan origin of the Gnawa and their rituals. Contemporary researchers now admit that identifying the origin of this people from a word is unreasonable today, especially since the Gnawa of Morocco are not all black, Arab or Muslim. They also co-exist in Berber and Jewish communities. According to new evidence, the Gnawa have been Moroccan for generations and are not all descendants of slaves. The Gnawa of Morocco have a very rich ritual and symbolic tradition which is performed notably in lila. This CD is devoted to the third phase of these ritual nights –the Mlouk (“the possessors”)– and offers a sample of an ecstatic moment of the lila when, moving through the seven colours, the maâlem and the community around him occupy the sanctified space.

CD

World music

Ocora

03-06-2019

3415820000210