"You'll find that Gnawis live all over the world," says Abdenbi Binizi, a musician from Morocco's musically gifted Islamic brotherhood. Not a people as such, Gnawa trace their ancestries to various parts of sub-Saharan Africa, and claim as their patron saint Sidi Bilal, the Prophet Mohammed's first muezzin, or caller to prayer. Morocco captured the Malian city of Timbuktu in the 16th century, and brought Bambara-speaking slaves across the Sahara. The fact that the Gnawa's main string instrument--the sintir or gimbri--resembles a large version of the Bambara ngoni, suggests that many of the Gnawa came from there. Today, Gnawa gather to play music and dance acrobatically in Marrakesh's traditional square, Jemaa el Fna, once a crossroads for caravans from Mali, Mauritania and points south. Gnawa play deeply hypnotic trance music, marked by low-toned, rhythmic sintir melodies, call-and-response singing, hand clapping and cymbals called qaraqish. Gnawa dardeba ceremonies use music and dance to evoke ancestral saints who can drive out evil, cure psychological ills, or remedy scorpion stings. The album Night Spirit Masters, produced by Bill Laswell and Richard Horowitz in 1990, provides an evocative studio experience with a variety of Gnawa musicians, including sintir player/vocalists Mustapha Baqbou (from Jil Jilala) and Abdelqader Oughassal. One young Gnawa, Hassan Hakmoun, has settled in New York where he combines traditional instruments, keyboards and guitars to create a fusion that nods to Hendrix, even as the rhythm section moves back and forth between Jemaa el Fna and the Lower East Side. Lately, Hakmoun has been leading a more traditional group. American jazz musicians, notably Randy Weston and Pharoah Sanders, have also worked with Gnawa to find an intersection between jazz exploration and dardeba trance.