Last fall, Duke University and world music label Alula Records (both based in Durham, North Carolina) brought the Moroccan group Nass Marrakech, to Duke University's Nelson Music Room for a concert. Alula had released Nass Marrakech's album Sabil 'a 'Salaam in the United States that year, and the label was able to bring the group to the U.S. for a brief series of concerts. The event at Duke sold out and was a huge success. The fact that Nass Marrakech was singing mainly in Arabic and performing a style of music that few people in the room had ever heard before was of little relevance. It certainly didn't stop anyone from dancing.

This music was a combination of Gnawa music, Arabic vocal styles, and instrumentation derived from North and West Africa, which included the sintir (a three-stringed bass lute), the ud (a short-necked lute), and the karkaba (metallic castanets).

The concert opened with three band members — Abdeljalil Kodssi, Moulay M'Hamed Ennaji (who goes by the nickname "Sherif"), and Abdelaziz Arradi — performing traditional Gnawa material on stringed instruments (and singing, of course). The music was very lyrical and undertaken at a measured tempo. After several numbers, the opening trio was joined by the group's percussionists, and the music became a good deal more rhythmic, loud, and uptempo. Many members of the audience found it impossible to remain seated, much to the delight of the band. Nass Marrakech had succeeded in invoking, to a certain degree, the ambiance of Place Djemaa el-Fna, the open-air market in Marrakech's old city.

Just before Nass Marrakech took the stage, Chouki El Hamel, Assistant Professor of African and African-American Studies at Duke, spoke to the audience about the history of the Gnawa people and their music. According to Professor El Hamel, about 900 years ago slavery, conscription, and trade brought the Gnawa people into the Maghreb [Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia] from west Africa, during the Almoravid dynasty. Since the inhabitants of the Maghreb believed many of these enslaved black people were from Ancient Ghana (a kingdom north of Mali), they referred to them as Gnawa. By 1100, the people of the Maghreb were Muslim, and it appears that most of the Gnawa brought into North Africa were also Muslim, having converted prior to their enslavement.

The name Gnawa served as a catch-all for a variety of West African peoples who found themselves transported into the Maghreb and pressed into servitude. They originally came from the area constituted by present-day Mali, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Côte d'Ivoire, and Burkina Faso (the same region from which supplied so many African slaves to the Caribbean and the Americas). One of the most important things these peoples brought with them into captivity was their native music.

We know that traditional music was a source of comfort to African slaves living in the American South (and we understand the profound effect the development of that music has had on the history of American music). It was the same for the Gnawa people, who found consolation in their native music. Professor El Hamel noted that in Gnawa music we find lyrics that express "the trauma of being displaced and the deep hurt of losing their homes," as well as songs that deal with the assimilation of the west Africans into the societies of the Maghreb.
The music of Nass Marrakech is a blending of traditional Gnawa trance music and modern influences. The trance music comes from the Gnawa trance ceremony called derdeba. The Gnawa believe that evil spirits may sometimes be the cause of misfortune or illness or an unfavorable condition. Infertility or depression, for instance, may be seen as the work of evil spirits, and the Gnawa believe that the derdeba can be employed to cleanse a person of such an affliction.
A derdeba will be performed at night, inside the home of a Gnawa family/group. Because the ceremony is performed at night, it is also referred to as al-layla (Arabic for "the night"; Nass band members used this Arabic name when referring to the trance ceremony). As Professor El Hamel explained, "The ceremony usually includes seven sections, which are represented by seven saints or ancestral spirits. Each section is also associated with a particular color, and each color symbolizes a particular function in nature and beyond.

"Music, chant, 'call and response,' and dance, which are fundamental in the ceremony, are the most visible trait," he added. "Some participants go into a trance where a spirit may associate with them and express through the dancer's mouth its wish for the appropriate tune and the preferred color. Al-Layla will continue until the goal is achieved, and the trance is over, and the participant has been cleansed from his affliction."

Al-Layla was, and remains, a very private ceremony. Only the family of the afflicted person, their relatives, and the musicians are allowed to take part in it.

Asked what sort of occasion would call for a trance ceremony nowadays, Florenci Mas, Nass Marrakech's manager and producer, replied, very much in the vein of Professor El Hamel's remarks at the Duke concert, that the ceremony is a spiritual healing. "This isn't about, say, having a broken leg and going into a trance and then your leg is okay," he said. "That's not what this is about. It's about getting rid of bad energy and getting good energy."

This is an excerpt from issue #93.