Morocco’s Gnawa, heirs to a musical and spiritual tradition brought north across the Sahara centuries ago by black slaves, are enjoying new fame as their hypnotic rhythms hook listeners across the world.
The Gnawa brotherhoods have long scraped a living on the margins of Moroccan society by offering to restore health or good fortune through seances of trance and incantation.
They symbolize the rich cultural mix of a country at the crossroads of Africa, Europe and the Arab world and many Moroccans say they are part of their national identity. But hard-liners, whose influence has grown among working-class Moroccans, have undermined their status by condemning their hedonistic lifestyle and belief in supernatural beings of African origin. Now, the Gnawi have found an inadvertent champion in the North African kingdom’s government as it seeks to bolster Morocco’s moderate Maliki strain of Islam.
Authorities have promoted regional Moussems, or festivals, that involve the veneration of local saints and held international events to showcase and discuss Sufi identity. The Gnawa have indirectly benefited because they derive their spiritual authority from the same beliefs.
The government also knows the exotic and free-spirited Gnawi are a powerful draw for tourists, and it has backed an annual Gnawa and World Music festival in the windy Atlantic city of Essaouira that this year drew almost half a million visitors.
The festival has propelled mainly poor musicians into the world music major league, introducing them to large audiences from Boston to Berlin.
“The children of Gnawi were once turning to other professions as they could not survive,” said Essaouira festival organizer Neila Tazi. “Now more of them are choosing to become Gnawis and inherit the repertoire of their fathers.”
Only some Gnawi are of black African descent but their culture arrived in Morocco in the late 16th century when emissaries of the Saadian King Ahmed el-Mansour Dehbi returned from a mission in modern-day Mali with gold and slaves.
The slaves were put to work near Essaouira, processing sugar for export to Europe. When the factories shut a few years later, they mixed with local Berber and Saharan tribes.
Their belief in sub-Saharan values, such as Mimouna, and rites of possession fused with local beliefs in demons, or djnoun, and saints like Abdel Kader Jilali and Moulay Brahim.
