Morocco's female Gnawa ambassador Asmâa Hamzaoui

With its low and resonant thud, the sound of the gimbri is unmistakable and once heard, never forgotten. The three-stringed bass lute is an intrinsic part of Gnawa music, along with the shrill clattering of qaraqabs (metal castanets), call-and-response vocals and ululations.

The exact origin of Gnawa culture and its music is much debated, but it’s widely believed to have been present in Morocco within the Sufi brotherhoods since at least the 16th century. A heady mix of African, Arabic and Amazigh (Berber) cultures, folklore and mysticism, the world of Gnawa has been almost exclusively male – until now.

At the forefront of this sea change is Asmâa Hamzaoui, Morocco’s leading female maalma (spiritual master), and her all-female group Bnat Timbouktou (Daughters of Timbuktu).

Asmâa and her group first made waves back in 2019 when they released their debut international album Oulad Lghaba (Children of the Forest) with the Swedish label ajabu!. “Gnawa music is about history, suffering, as well as joy,” Asmâa told me back in 2019 when we spoke before her showcase at WOMEX in Tampere. Asmâa Hamzaoui ‘feels warrior-like… There are big things to come,’ wrote Jane Cornwell in her review of Oulad Lghaba (in #154).

Then, of course, COVID hit and everything promptly stopped. Asmâa and her band gave some notable online performances from their home in Casablanca during this hiatus, including one in 2021 for the WOW Festival. Now Asmâa is set to release her long-awaited follow-up and is preparing to take her band on tour again, including their first proper headline show in the UK at Songlines Encounters Festival in May.

The new album is called L’Bnat, (Daughters). Asmâa is the youngest of two daughters of the renowned maalem, Rachid Hamzaoui. His eldest daughter is Aicha (30), Asmâa’s sister, who flanks her on stage, singing and playing qaraqabs. She also acts as Asmâa’s spokesperson when we catch up on the phone.

Before we discuss L’Bnat, Aicha tells me about their childhood: “We grew up with Gnawa music,” she explains. “Other maalems came to our house to play gimbri or qaraqabs; they came to learn with our father. It was like a school of Gnawa music, something we’re very proud of.”

Asmâa was seven when their father began teaching her the gimbri. While being interviewed for AFP last year, she asked: “Why shouldn’t a woman play the gimbri? Why shouldn’t women be part of this dynamic? … The day I had the opportunity to play the gimbri and succeeded… I didn’t hesitate for a second.” Traditionally during the lila (all-night trance session) women are the moqadema (healers) who are responsible for preparing the ceremonies, inviting the sick, burning the incense and calling up the spirits in front of the maalem.

But Asmâa was determined to keep on playing the gimbri and, with the encouragement of her father and mother, formed Bnat Timbouktou in 2012.

Asmâa may have been the first Moroccan woman to publicly wield a gimbri onstage but there have been other gimbri trailblazers, namely Algeria’s Hasna El Becharia, who is now in her 70s. Both Hasna and Asmâa appeared at Arabesques Festival in Montpellier last September (reviewed in #193).

The most renowned place to experience the music in situ is in Essaouira at the Gnawa and World Music Festival. Held every June (bar the COVID years) since 1998, it’s been instrumental in changing attitudes towards Gnawa music and its practitioners, who often were seen as outcasts, given the mysterious and spiritual nature of their practices. Fans of Gnawa music have included Pharoah Sanders, Don Cherry, Robert Plant, Wayne Shorter and Snarky Puppy, and the influx of international artists who come to Essaouira each year has seen the music become fully accepted and an important part of Morocco’s vibrant contemporary culture.

Asmâa made her own debut at the festival in 2017, aged 20. She returned the following year and gave a memorable performance with the Malian singer Fatoumata Diawara. “Asmâa is very open to collaboration,” her sister tells me, “but there has to be a spiritual connection, like with Fatou, who told Asmâa she gave her the energy to dance and sing.”

Another notable collaboration that boosted Asmâa’s profile among British music lovers saw her join forces in 2019 with Kate Stables (This Is The Kit). They worked together for The Sound Odyssey, a BBC Radio 4 series (available on BBC Sounds).

An indication that Morocco’s patriarchal attitudes – at least in event programming – are changing was noticeable at last year’s Gnawa and World Music Festival when Asmâa played the Saturday night headline slot on the largest stage at Place Moulay Hassan, alongside another all-female supergroup, Les Amazones d’Afrique. Asmâa is no longer the sole female brandishing a gimbri onstage, as Yousra Mansour from Bab L’ Bluz and Hind Ennaira are also players, though they usually perform alongside male musicians.

The other marked difference Aicha is keen to point out is that while there is a lot of Gnawa fusion around, Asmâa is “100% traditional Gnawa – she’s rooted in this tradition. It’s a difficult tradition to master: the rhythms, the words, the lyrics and stories.”

Even though she’s still only in her 20s, Asmâa embodies the essence of this tradition, as can be heard on L’Bnat’s opening track. As the bluesy, pentatonic twang of the gimbri kicks off, Asmâa proclaims ‘Gnawa!’ while her group join in with call-and-response vocals, underpinned by skittering qaraqabs. The tracks are predominantly named after women, so there’s ‘Mira’ and ‘Malika’ (both princesses), and ‘Aicha’ who, as well as being a revered female saint, like Mira, was also sister to the late King Hassan II, a champion of women’s rights in Morocco and an ambassador to the UK in the 60s. All the names are prefixed by ‘Lalla’, an Amazigh word used to address women, similar to ‘Your Highness’ or ‘Madame’. It’s a celebration of all women, Aicha tells me, except for the final bonus track ‘Sadati’, which pays homage to the late maalem Mahmoud Gania (or Guinea), an iconic Gnawa music figure, who died in 2015. He sang this on his last album, Colours of the Night (released in 2017), and invited Asmâa and her band to sing the backing vocals. “He was an inspiration to Asmâa and gave us the conviction to perform, despite the fact that we’re women,” explains Aicha. “This was our way to say thank you.”

There’s a synaesthetic quality about the music that conjures up images of people dancing in trance, musicians in bright tunics adorned with cowrie shells, twirling tassels on their caps along to a sound that increases in tempo and intensity. Different colours are associated with different spirits, especially during the lila. As Aicha explains, their last album was black in colour due to Gnawa’s slavery roots. L’Bnat, she says, is full of colour, especially yellow (for energy) and green (associated with nature and royalty). She also reminds me that her sister really is the whole package: Asmâa sings, dances, plays the gimbri and partakes in the lila as a maalma – just like her father, and all the great maalems before her. Now Asmâa and her sisterhood are ready to remind audiences that it’s not just about the patriarchy, as, to quote another great singer, the sisters are doing it for themselves.

Asmâa Hamzaoui & Bnat Timbouktou will perform at Kings Place, London on May 16, as part of Songlines Encounters. To buy tickets, click here.

This article appears in the April 2024 issue of Songlines (#196) magazine. Never miss an issue – subscribe today

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