Mlouk: Gnawa and World Music Festival

The Gnawa and World Music Festival of Essaouira, Morocco is one of the planet's most pioneering and progressive musical celebrations. Created in 1998, it has showcased the malleability of the bluesy, pentatonic music and elevated the Gnawa, once derided, to living heritage status. Under the aegis of visionary founder and director Neila Tazi, it has highlighted the form's authentic (tagnaouite) roots and its practitioners' role as healers.

This CD offers a taste of the liberation inherent in all-night ceremonies known as lilas, which involve incense, trance, symbolic use of colour and songs divided into three phases. The third and longest, the mlouk (possessors) is represented here on six songs by three Gnawa maalems, masters of the gimbri (bass lute), each from revered families.

First up, from Casablanca, are 20-year-old Asma Hamzaoui and Bnat Tombouctou. The young female leader boldly wields her three-string instrument through plaintive, insistent songs accompanying the use of the black colour. Also from Casablanca, Maalem Saïd Oughassal and his Koyous chant and handclap through the playful section call oulad Bambara (meaning sons of Bambara), emoting en route; the voice of Marrakech's Maalem Aziz Baqbou soars through the highly spiritual ‘Allal’, his group's qaraqab (iron castanets) skittering behind him. Throughout, a sense of otherness, family and intimacy captures what the festival is about. Stunning.