Deborah Kapchan is a professor of Performance Studies at New York University, and the principle voice for Afropop Worldwide’s Hip Deep program, Traveling Spirit Masters: The Gnawa of Morocco. Professor Kapchan has been doing research in Morocco since 1990. In 2007, she published a book on her work with the Gnawa, Traveling Spirit Masters: Moroccan Gnawa, Trance and Music in the Global Marketplace (Wesleyan University Press). Banning Eyre interviewed her in her office in New York. Here’s their conversation. Also, click here for lots of additional gnawa links, and excerpts from our interviews with historian Mohammed Ennaji and ethnomusicologist Tim Abdellah Fuson.
Banning Eyre: Tell us how you initially became involved with Gnawa music. B.E.: I’d like you to read aloud some of the Gnawa song lyrics that speak about slavery: (pp. 180-81) Then talk about slavery as a historical reality for the Gnawa, and also as a metaphor in Gnawa possession ritual.  The origins of the Gnawa are not completely homogeneous. The Gnawa came from different parts of Africa. Many, the most, came during the 15th and 16th centuries under the Saadians who went to Timbuktu and basically brought captives from the Songhai Empire to Morocco to work as soldiers. But the West African sub-Saharan population in North Africa has been in Morocco for a long time. There are herders in the Sahara, Berberized or Berber-speaking people, that have been documented since the 3rd century. But the largest influx was in the 15th and 16th century, as slaves. So for the Gnawa, slavery is something they employ in their songs as we just heard in these lyrics. Now as a metaphor for possession, first off, the spirits, the possessing spirits are called mluk, the owners. So one is inhabited by spirits, but also possessed, owned, by spirits. The trauma of slavery, on the other hand, is something that can be worked out in ceremonies such as possession ceremonies. People are going into trance, and there are a lot of mortification rights. For example people slash themselves with knives. People burn themselves with the flames of candles, but while in a very different state. That is, they are performed as if they were possessed as slaves, but they are in a transcendent state where they are not vulnerable. In a sense, they can go from being the victim of a spirit to what they call "working the spirits," a kind of mastering of the state of possession. And there's a healing involved in the whole ceremony. The ceremonies are healing ceremonies. That's what they are. Not everyone who attends a Gnawa ceremony is possessed by a spirit. The large majority are, but there are some who go for the catharsis of trance itself. Trance. There are many forms of trance. Gilbert Rouget in his book Music and Trance talks about these different kinds of trance. Certainly, in the Gnawa ceremony this is music-induced trance. But it is also possession trance. There are also ecstatic trances that may not involve possession by a spirit. But the ceremonies are for healing by the spirits, and the spirits pass through music. One m’allam (Gnawa master) told me that the spirits pass through the hajhuj, the main instrument that the master plays to bring the spirits and to heal those who are afflicted through spirit possession. It's extremely cathartic in every case. 
B.E.: We could all use more of that, eh? B.E.: There isn’t much of that readily available in American culture. I think we have a trance deficit in our society. B.E.: In your book, you quote texts about healing through forgiveness. Islam seems to become a vehicle for transcending, even “forgiving” the crime of slavery. Is that reading too much into it?  This is actually a point of disagreement. It is very important here to mention some of the French scholarship I admire, the work of Viviana Pâques, who was a student of Marcel Griaule, and of Bertrand Hell, an extremely prolific and very profound scholar of the Gnawa who now works in Madagascar and elsewhere. The French scholarship views the Gnawa more as Sufis because they grew up in the Sufi-imbued milieu of Morocco. However, if you speak to people who are serious Sufi devotees in Morocco, they might not agree with that. For them, being Sufi is having a shaykh and having a written tradition that you follow. Perhaps we’re splitting hairs here, but in any case asking for forgiveness and healing is common to all these groups. B.E.: You point out in your book, intriguingly, that Morocco, like America, was a destination for slaves. What do you make of that commonality? Although the visiting artists are sometimes well known, and greatly appreciated, it's really when the Gnawa come on stage clacking the qraqab (iron castanets) that the applauds and goes wild. There is something about the addition of the Gnawa aesthetic to all the other music, whether it's jazz or rai, that sends everyone into a kind of rapture. 
B.E.: Fascinating. And to have it in that particular setting, so laden with the history of slavery is quite amazing. Do you think most of the people who come are aware of that connection? B.E.: I understand that there are a lot of Gnawa today who do not share this ancestry of slavery. Who are they? The ceremony is called a lila, which means night, because it starts at night, sometimes not until ten or even midnight, and goes till early in the morning, sometimes 7, 8 am. It was not professionalized until relatively recently. The Gnawa used to work for meals and a few dirhams that would be exchanged over the course of the ceremony. Now, many young people want to learn Gnawa music so that they can become "Gnawa musicians," travel to Europe, put it on the identity card, get a passport, and be a professional Gnawa. Now what happens to the ritual knowledge? What happens to the knowledge in the bones? I met a young Gnawi on the East Coast. I won't be more specific than that. He was very nice. He had learned all the songs quite proficiently. We were at a university campus. He was about 24, and he called himself a ma‘llem, and he did play the lila for the people who came to the concert. During the course of the evening some of the audiences members – those familiar with the Gnawa -- went into trance, which shocked most other audience members. I mention that story because one does not proclaim oneself a ma‘llem, a master. That's a designation that he is acquired, or designated from one master to another. It's something that you have to work for. You have to be an apprentice for years in order to have the status of a ma‘llem.
 I think this story is very significant. Young people have to eat of course. I'm not criticizing this. I'm just noting it. People learn the aesthetics. They learn the music, but they don't have the years and years of ritual experience in healing others. That takes mastery of many kinds, musical mastery but a spiritual mastery as well. The Gnawa were spiritual masters traditionally, and many still are. There are also a lot of young people who want to learn the repertoire, but they really don't learn everything that’s behind it. B.E.: So any young Moroccan can become interested in Gnawa practice and pursue that path. They don't have to share this ancestry of slavery. I read in the notes to the Night Spirit Masters CD words that Paul Bowles wrote in 1990. He writes, "60 years ago, when I first came to Morocco, the Gnawa were almost uniformly black, and many still spoke their native tongue, Bambara." Let’s start with this idea that they were blacker. It suggests that Bowles is remembering a time when the Gnawa kept more to themselves, and their work was not a profession as it is now. In contrast, today the Gnawa path is open to anyone who's interested. Have I got this about right? B.E.: Okay. But this is not like the griots in West Africa, where you have to be born into that kind of family or else the door is just not open to you. It's different with the Gnawa, and the fact that more people from the general Moroccan population have become Gnawa over the course of the last century, that would explain why Paul Bowles remembers the Gnawa has been “more black” in 1930, right? 
B.E.: So then the second part of Bowles’s statement. If the Gnawa came from all these different places in West Africa, why this intense focus on a single ethnic group from Mali—the Bambara? Based on the history as described, I don't see why this one group has such a dominant role in the way they tell their story. B.E.: Okay. It is interesting, though, that Bowles remembers the Gnawa actually speaking Bambara. I wonder what the reality of that is. But we won't sort that out today. So moving on, before we talk about possession and trance, why don’t you give us an overview of what happens during a lila? The lila, or the actual ceremony, sometimes takes place the next day. The Gnawa will arrive. The guests and invited people arrive, little by little. And at that time, there is what one can call l’abba that is “play” or fraja, “performance or spectacle”—dancing and music that is not ritual music per se. This is basically to create ambience, to create community. It's a lot of fun. It is not to invoke the spirits—not yet. That section can go on for several hours.  By the way, I've seen people falling to trance during this invocation on the street. When the invocation is finished, people go back into the home or the apartment, cross over the threshold, and the ceremony then officially begins. From that point on, the music is very powerful, because it will bring the spirits through those who are possessed by them. The mqaddema, the female overseer, is there to supervise, because there are people who fall rather violently. There are people who need to be held. Very often women are held with scarves around their waists so that they don't fall, to maintain their balance. The spirit possession begins with the progression of the spirits, each with its own suite of songs. Each suite of songs is associated with a color, and in each color there are spirits that come through. So are there are the white spirits, which are holy spirits. The green spirits as well. Green is the color of Islam, so these are very holy Islamic spirits. You know, the spirits themselves have religions. So there are spirits that are Muslim, and there are a few that are Jewish, but they aren't invoked very much anymore, and that's interesting in itself. There are pagan spirits. There are the red spirits, like Sidi Hamou. Sidi Hamou is the spirit of the slaughterhouse, and he's very difficult to manage, very demanding. There’s Sidi Mimoun, a black spirit. There’s Lalla Mimouna and Lalla Malika. Lalla Mira is associated with the color yellow. I smile every time I even say her name because she is a laughing, joyous spirit. She likes perfume and henna and pretty clothes, and when her music comes on and women start giggling and laughing, you know that she's making herself known. Throughout the evening, the different spirits are invoked and the different colors with them. Each spirit has a song. Each spirit has a color. Each spirit has an incense. Each spirit has something either to drink or to eat. So all the senses are involved. There is ingestion at regular moments in the ceremony, and there is a kind of imbibing of incense that happens, which is a very, very important part of the ceremony. Lalla Mira, for example—her incense is musk. There are also all sorts of resins: ambergris, frankincense, myrrh, benzoin, sandalwood—all of these resins and woods are put on the brazier and are held very often right under the nose of the possessed. It's very heady, very thick. It kind of changes your brain waves right away, and when someone rises up to a particular spirit in a particular color, they are draped with the veils and cloths of that color.  So if during Sidi Mimoun’s nuba, his “turn,” someone gets up to trance, they are draped in black. Sometimes they are given knives, which they use to cut themselves. The mortification that happens during the ceremony is quite impressive the first time you see it, as all mortification ceremonies are. You quickly get used to it, and what is always impressive is that people are not hurt. And so there is a kind of symbolic wound that is created, but it is not a wound that injures, but rather one that symbolizes a healing. A cure. B.E.: That is so interesting. I saw some of that in one of these films. It looked like they were really cutting themselves, but there wasn't any blood. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zW90J1t-RQ0&feature=PlayList&p=1F51620FA77F153C&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=28 B.E.: You write that trance is “a transnational category of the sacred.” What does this mean? 
B.E.: So there is both a commonality between these different varieties of trance, and yet in each context there are all sorts of particularities. How they think about it. How they talk about it. Aside from the actual experience, that's important too, isn't it? These are very much like dances. One can learn them, but it does not mean that one is possessed if one learns the movements. There is a certain amount of mimesis that happens. When little children observe their aunts, uncles and mothers and cousins doing this, it's very easy for them—usually when they reach puberty—to do the same thing and to find that they also are possessed. Because it is a technique of the body. It’s a practice. Now when it comes to possession trance or ecstatic trance, there is the question of how we define it, and that is very culturally specific. For the Gnawa, it is very definitely possession trance. B.E.: Okay. Let’s talk about possession in general terms. There seem to be a variety of possessing spirits, good and bad, and also different levels of receptivity in the body being inhabited. Take us through the stages of possession as you have observed it during ceremonies.  I think I mentioned that when you grow up in this ambience, it is likely that your path will join those of your predecessors in being possessed, and in being able to trance or having to trance. However, some people are simply afflicted, afflicted with spirits. That may manifest in many different ways. They may have temporary paralysis. They may have headaches that they can't explain. Their joints hurt. Their legs are heavy. I've heard that a lot. They go to the doctor. The doctor says, “There is absolutely nothing wrong with you. There is nothing I can do for you.” They end up going to a fqih, a cleric or a holy man, or a mqaddema or mqaddem, an overseer or responsible person in the Gnawa community, and then they are divined. There is a divination ceremony that happens in which a sacrifice is made and different colored cloths are put on the person in question to see what spirit will manifest. Once the divination has been made, then one is obliged to propitiate one's spirit. Spirits in the Gnawa ideology never leave. It's not like Christianity where there's a belief in spirits but you can go to a priest and have them exorcised. It wasn't too long ago that that was common even among Christians. For the Gnawa, the spirits are always there. They are permanent inhabitants of the body. Kay skunu f-ik. “They inhabit you." What can you do? You can propitiate them with a sacrifice. You can propitiate them with incense. You have a ceremony that you open to the rest of the community. Very often, these ceremonies are held during sha‘ban, which is the month preceding Ramadan. Why is this? It's because during Ramadan, which is the holy month, the spirits are basically banished. They go underground, and have no power over human beings. So if you haven't done your spirit propitiation ceremony by the time sha‘ban comes around, you had better do it, because you can't do it during Ramadan.  When a propitiation ceremony is held, you meet a lot of other people who share your affliction, if you will—who share your state of possession. The fact that you are maskun or maskuna, “inhabited,” means that you're in the community. You are invited to other people's ceremonies. You have a chance to narrate your dreams, for example, and narrate your visions. A whole discursive community develops around the bodily fact, or the spiritual fact, of being possessed. B.E.: Can you give me a physical description of what actually happens when a person becomes possessed during a ceremony? Trancing is very low in the hips. There's a lot of stamping of the feet. The arms very often are behind the body. The chest is forward. A lot of the time, the hair is loosened because people will be putting their heads back and forth. They will be circulating their heads, really moving their body briskly from side to side so the hair comes undone. Again, people are always covered when possible in veils, or cloths are put over people to cover them. Sometimes, the more experienced trancers will just put the cloth over themselves, over their entire face. They are not visible at all except as a kind of silhouette under this cloth. They also may fall to the ground. They also may be on their knees and swinging their heads back and forth. Some people seek out the incense as though it were a source of sustenance, and put their heads over it.  There is a very intricate interaction with the musicians, particularly with the master who is playing the hajhuj, which is a three-stringed, pentatonic instrument. I have heard Gnawa masters—and there's one particular time I'm thinking of—actually interact with the spirit who is in the body, saying, "Work for it." (Khadam ‘ali-ha.) There is a back and forth, a kind of conversation that is going on between the spirit that is inhabiting the person and the musician. Sometimes the Gnawa will stop playing the qraqab, which are these very loud, heavy iron cymbals, and the hajhuj. They will stop all the percussion and melodic instruments, and just sing, or just clap their hands. Once that happened and the spirit that was dancing in front of them started making the motion for the qraqab to start playing again, and stamping their feet because the spirit wanted the qraqab to begin. So there is a conversation that's happening. This is a very interactive event at all levels. One person gets up to trance and others will get up to trance, and the sign of a real good master is that a lot of people get up to trance. He really brings the spirits through, and that will be commented on the next day. People will comment on the proficiency of the music, the excellence of it, and the energy of the whole ceremony. B.E.: That's interesting. So the ma‘llem will be playing and singing, and people are going into trance and getting possessed. But could you say that the reason this happens is because of his skill as a musician and singer? 
B.E.: This is reminding me of my conversation with Paul Berliner about possession ceremonies among the Shona people in Zimbabwe. Mbira players are sometimes evaluated based on how many people become possessed. If it's a very good ceremony, lots of people become possessed. But I had the sense they are that it really was a question of musicianship. B.E.: You make an interesting case for spirit possession as a form of “resistence” to “forms of hegemony” both in a gender context and a colonial politics context. Explain this? B.E.: That's very interesting. Because I suppose trance is always taking place in some historical context. One might think of it as a way to escape, but what you are saying is that it's really a way to answer back to the past, and to resolve things. 
B.E.: Let’s talk about music in general terms. Listening is an important concept throughout Islamic mystic traditions, correct? B.E.: When we did our program about tarab music with A.J. Racy, we talked about sama‘ in the context of Arabic art music, Umm Kulthum and so on. This seems like a fascinating extension of that idea from the near mystical into a fully mystical realm. Music, like incense, has this ability to enter the body, to cross thresholds, and that seems to be a powerful aspect of the ceremony. Let's talk about something else that crosses thresholds, water. I understand that water, even tears, play an important role in possession among the Gnawa. I was always cautioned about crying: “You have to be careful, because the tears will attract the jnun.” But the interesting thing about tears, and the thing that I talk about in my book, is their connection between inner and the outer. The jnun themselves are able to pass in. In the Moroccan idiom, al-jnun kay-tlaw f-ik. “The jinns rise up in you and then, kat-tah, “you fall." So the jinn rises up and then the person falls, and when they get up again, it is in the identity of the possessing spirit. 
B.E.: That's fascinating. So when you cry, you are vulnerable. B.E.: Of course, the difference between the music and the incense as opposed to the tears is the direction of the flow. B.E.: The idea of transposing a spiritual desire (to be close to God) with a romantic or sexual one is something that runs through all sorts of Islamic artistic expression (and other faiths as well). But it has intriguing particularities in the Gnawa context.  The Gnawa have to decide when to stop. The spirit will usually tell the Gnawa to continue. If the Gnawa stop, and the spirit wants more, the spirit will let them know. But the spirit will also say, "Enough." So there is this interaction between the ma‘llem, the master musician, and the spirit. How are these things cued? They are cued with the body. They are cued with sound as well. There is a lot of sensual attention and interrelation at the ceremonies. B.E.: That's great. In terms of how things proceed, you talked about how the song ends and the possession ends. So if one or more people become possessed at a point in the suite when the musicians are playing one of the colors, there must be a certain art to determining how long to keep playing that song, before you move on to the next one. Because the possession of that particular group of people will end when the music for that song ends. Is that pretty much a rule? B.E.: And that can really vary.  I've never been to a Tangier ceremony, I must say. I have spent time with the Tangier ma‘llem Abdellah El Gourd quite a bit, and he says that the Tangier ceremony lasts for three days. Of course, during the day, they stop. But three nights, over the course of three days. It varies from region to region, but yes, it can go on for quite a long time. B.E.: Who is Aisha Qandisha? Aisha Qandisha has been rising in popularity, and she is by far the most popular spirit in Morocco. She comes at the very end of the ceremony, just as, or just before night turns into day. In the course of her suite of songs, you see the sun rise. And then the ceremony is over. She is very, very powerful, and she possesses both women and men.  More than that, I have heard stories about Aisha Qandisha. I know a ma‘llem who is possessed by her. She has many incarnations. One is Aisha al-bahariyya “Aisha of the sea.” She possesses fishermen. He saw her when he was fishing when he was young, and was completely struck, mdrub, as they say in Arabic. He was stunned, in the literal sense of that term. He came back. He was still at his mother's home at that time. She brought him to a mqaddema, a healer, who basically got him back on his feet. But she had possessed him with her very beautiful, gleaming eyes. He described her as having inhuman, gleaming eyes when he saw her across the water. She's a very powerful jinn. What does it mean that she is more and more popular? Is this a feminization of the Gnawa pantheon? Is this a comment on the diminishment of patriarchy in Morocco? Perhaps B.E.: That's great. You know, the first time I ever heard of Aisha Qandisha was from the musician and producer Pat Jabaar. This was over 15 years ago, but as I recall he described her almost more as a witch, a fearsome figure that every Moroccan child dreaded. And of course, as we know, Pat named his group after this spirit, Aisha Kandisha’s Jarring Effects. B.E.: Tell us about your own first experience of trance, and how that came to affect your work. 
I spent months just watching these ceremonies, kind of as if it were choreography, watching the movements, watching how they get up on the floor, when, what they do. Then one night, I got up and tranced. I should say that I've always enjoyed dancing. I've always been an amateur dancer. So this is something that I enjoy, and I was looking forward to the moment when I would feel confident enough to get up onto the floor, and finally I did. The rest of the evening passed. I think I only got up for one spirit. I don't remember who it was, or at least at the time, I didn't remember—they let me know who it was later. In the morning, we were drinking our harira soup, as you do in Morocco, and the ma‘llem looks over the rim of his bowl and he says, "Tlaw f-ik al-barah….. The spirits rose up in you yesterday, right?" And then he looked me right in the eye, and he said, "The spirits rose up and you yesterday." Period. It was a pronouncement, and from that moment on, I was considered maskuna, “inhabited." I went to a divination ceremony, I began to have visions, I had lucid dreams, and I had what you might call auditory hallucinations where I'd be hearing the music in the middle of the day, as if it were playing right next to me. I went pretty far down the path. B.E.: Fascinating. I must say that as I was reading I didn't really expect that, but I think it has great persuasiveness to your book. You write, “In the choreography of trance, the spirits determine the steps, but the body assumes them.” Later on, you call the trancer “the performer of a complex script.” This is something that's happening to you. The spirits are moving through you, and yet there is an order to it, going back to this idea that we spoke about, the mimesis of children watching elders. It seems like a bit of a paradox. Can you resolve that for us?  So trance is ubiquitous in Morocco. It is a culture of trance. It is everywhere. I have seen people go into trance listening to popular music on the street, and at festivals. I've seen people go into trance in the context of the ‘Aissawa Sufi music, but also popular music, Nass el Ghiwane, for example. The great thing about Nass el Ghiwane and Jil Jilala also—they had a Gnawi, someone who knew the music in each of those groups—was that it connected to this trance aesthetic. Trance has become one of the signature aesthetics of Moroccan music, as far as I'm concerned. Not malhun necessarily, not Andalusian classical music, but popular music has this element in it. Al-Maanouni, a Moroccan filmmaker, made a very well-known film called Al-Hal which Martin Scorsese recently remastered, which documents the popularity of trance and Nas al-Ghiwan. D.K.: You point out that dream interpretation is highly developed throughout the Islamic world. What do you make of that?
Freud was certainly not the first to interpret dreams! There is a long tradition of dream interpretation that comes out of Islamic philosophy. Ibn al-‘Arabi said, “…when man ascends in the degrees of gnosis, he will come to know…that he is a dreamer in the state of ordinary wakefulness and that the situation in which he dwells is a dream.” That said, night dreaming is also examined closely for signs from the divine. Again, going back to Ibn al-‘Arabi, there is the belief that humans are not able to understand or know God such as He is. It would obliterate us. Thus God talks to humans via symbols and these are often found in dreams. Ibn al-‘Arabi says that symbols are found in the region of barzakh -- the isthmus, or place in-between God and human being. (William C. Chittick (1979: II 379.24, attributed to Ibn al-‘Arabi) B.E.: You cite an interesting term: schizophonia. What is that?
Composer and writer Murray Schafer used it to talk about the separation of sound from its context of origin, the splitting of a sound from its source. Steven Feld took it up after that to analyze the social and economic permutations and inequalities that follow upon that separation in the world music market.
B.E.: Let's talk more about Nass el Ghiwan and Jil Jilala and about the cultural milieu of the 60s and 70s. What was the dynamic in Morocco and how was Gnawa identity changing, and what role did cultural events in America and Europe play in this?
D.K.: Well, Moroccan independence happened in 1956. It was a more secular time. People were interested in independence and the development of nationhood more than, for example, orthodox Islam. It was a time internationally where all sorts of things were going on. In Palestine. In Lebanon. It was a time of great pan-Arabism and revolutionary politics—the Black Panthers in the United States. Moroccans were interested in creating a state but not in being oppressed by it. They were very influenced by this international ambiance. There was the Pan African Conference in Algiers in 1969, and Moroccan dissident Ibrahim Serfati, a Moroccan Jew, was there, and he talked about the Black Panthers, and how this essential energy from Africa had to revitalize Morocco. He exhorted North Africans to also be inspired by these movements. Forgive me for opening a parentheses, but when I was doing my research in Brittany with the Gnawa, I was with Si Mohammed Chaouqi in a van on the way to a concert, and they were reading a newspaper, and in the newspaper, it said the local group Lila Noz was going to play, and the Gnawa were going to play with them. It mentioned Si Mohammed Chaouqi “who played in the past with Jimi Hendrix.” He had never told me that, and I said, “Si Mohammed, you played with Jimi Hendrix?!" And he said, "Oh, yeah. We used to love to get high.” That was a moment.  Anyway, coming back to the 1960s and 70s, not only was there a kind of essentialism going on in terms of Africa and African aesthetics, but it was in the service of a larger liberation politics, and the Gnawa at the time came to be kind of like the blues musicians of Morocco. Moroccan scholar Chouki el Hamel has a wonderful article in the Journal of North African Studies, and in another journal as well, on the Gnawa as blues musicians, the blues musicians of Morocco. They kind of play that role. And just as the blues musicians in the United States gave birth to so many genres afterwards, so the Gnawa infuse the Moroccan musical aesthetic and go in many, many different directions. They are poised right now to enter a global music market as “the blues musicians of Morocco.” Of course, it's not blues in the sense that we know it, but in the sense of being inheritors of slavery and the whole slave experience, there is a lot in common. Those associations are often made. B.E.: Bertrand Hell writes about the Gnawa as “gatekeepers of a counter world….moving on the limits of the licit…” What is their status in Morocco today? Specifically, how are the Gnawa perceived among Morocco’s various Sufi sects? You write of “their ambivalent reputation as magicians and tricksters within the hierarchy of Sufi-influenced tariqat and tai’fat.” How have you seen Gnawa status evolve over the years you’ve been exploring Gnawa culture.
 D.K.: There is so much Sufism in Morocco of so many different ilks, so many different orders. The Gnawa are not Sufis. They are considered a tai’fa, an association, rather than a tariqa, an order. One of the differences being, not only hagiography, not only mediation by a shaykh, but the Sufis overall are interested in communing with God. They go straight up to find access to and communion with God. They don't hang around with the spirits at all. It's not that they don't believe in the spirits. They believe in the spirits, but they don't want to traffic with the spirits. It's a dangerous place to be. The Gnawa, they are specialists in the spirit world. When people don't know what to do with the spirits that are plaguing them, the Gnawa are the people to see because the Gnawa have mastered this realm. This is the realm in which they live. Because of this, they are considered transgressive. They are often feared, because they have experience in this realm of the spirits, which is a very dangerous realm. They can be considered magicians or tricksters, but the bottom line is they interact with the spirits, and the spirits are capricious. The spirits can be malevolent. They can be good too. When I was divined, and the mqaddema told me who my main possessing spirit was, she said, "He will strike, and he'll strike and he'll strike, but in the end, if you propitiate him properly, you will end up partaking of his power, and he will ultimately help you." It's a complicated relationship one has with one’s spirit, and the Gnawa make their business in understanding all of these subtleties. There aren't too many people who know that realm as they do. We were talking about the difference between the young guys coming up now and the ma‘llems (mu‘allamin, pl) of the past. I am not convinced that the young musicians, the self-proclaimed “masters” now, know the spirit realm. They can be fantastic musicians—but I'm not convinced that they would know what to do with someone who is deeply afflicted or unbalanced by the presence of a spirit in their life. 
B.E.: The historian Mohammed Ennaji went further than that. He basically said that the Gnawa of today are “performers.” The words of their songs are products that they sell, and basically it is no longer a ritual of healing. It is entertainment. He didn't seem to think there was any healing going on anymore, although he was very clear about the fact that there was a time when members of the white community went to the Gnawa for treatment, to the healed. But in today's context, with this whole cultural shift that flourished in the 60s and 70s as part of a longer process, that prior reality as Ennaji perceives it is pretty much over. That said, even when Viviana Pâques did her research in Tamsloht in the 1950s and 60s, there were very few Gnawa masters who could articulate the cosmology that she wrote about, that she found was an extension of sub-Saharan African cosmologies. She inferred a lot of it through the ceremony, and through the clues that people gave her. We have to remember that knowledge is transmitted in many ways. It's not necessarily in books. It's not even necessarily intellectual. Knowledge can be transmitted through the body and through music in ways that are very difficult to articulate but that nonetheless are transformative. Things are transmitted from generation to generation, and I have to believe that if the music continues to live, that some aspect of the wisdom of that music, and the healing that it embraces or for which it is a vehicle, also lives on. B.E.: You were shocked the first time you saw Gnawa musicians performing sacred music in a European club. Why? And what have you since learned about the efficacy of such performances?  He said, "The spirits know my niya, my intention, and my intentions are good so we’re good. We're good with the spirits. We’re good with the music." That's one response. Another response might be, "I play the music. The spirits do the work. And it doesn't matter where we are." So this ma‘llem is basically saying that it's not about the context. But then over time, one ma‘llem did it, another ma‘llem did it. Nothing seemed to happen, and then all of a sudden it just became common practice. It was shocking in the beginning. It is dangerous, because people go into trance, and when they do, there's no mqaddema to hold them, to take care of them, and to relate to the spirit. So it is dangerous in that regard, but this is where you might wonder if there is not an incremental secularization of the music, the more it is played in commercial context. To what extent does the ritual context carry the power and the meaning? It's a delicate balance. Because if you only play at nightclubs, eventually the healing aspects may get watered down. And clearly, some people come with no knowledge of who the Gnawa are, no knowledge of what they're supposed to be doing, and they have a little experience, and they leave. They may not know anything about trance healing, sacred music, or anything. At first, I was a little shocked. Now I am no longer shocked. It happens all the time. You know, I began my research in 1994. That's not that long ago, but things have changed considerably since then, and now the Gnawa really want to have that title on their identity card. Every Moroccan has an identity card that says what profession they work in, if they do, and one profession now is Gnawi. It helps you get a visa, and you can go out of the country as a professional musician. It's not so easy. It doesn't happen automatically, but there has been an incredible professionalization of the Gnawa identity, the Gnawa mark, the Gnawa aesthetic. With the Gnawa Festival in Essaouira particularly, this has gotten out of hand. B.E.: When did it become something that people wanted to put on their identity card, roughly? B.E.: The festival started in 1998, right? 
B.E.: Talk about the generalized idea of “diaspora.” The Gnawa exist at a nexus of African and Arab/Islamic diaspora, then move out from there to an even more complex diaspora (Randy Weston and jazz, the Britons and Afro-Celtic culture, etc). Can we see all of this as a single, extended movement of culture? You know, with Randy Weston coming back in the 1960s to Morocco, looking for a kind of African aesthetic and origin, he goes to Morocco and meets Abdellahh El Gourd, and now Abdellahh El Gourd is imbued with the history of jazz. So there's this lovely inversion, and now Abdellahh El Gourd—of course, with a wink of the eye—talks about the “jazz ancestors” who influenced him. He cites Randy Weston, Archie Schepp and Pharoah Sanders as having influenced him personally, but he also included the masters of those jazz musicians, whom he has adopted. This becomes an interwoven notion of diaspora and mutual influence and ancestry. Heritage is created. Heritage is the discourse that we tell ourselves and the history that we write, and we can write it in so many fascinating ways. The Gnawa are doing that. B.E.: They are so adaptive. It's really impressive. And I guess, if you look at the whole sweep of their history, it's always been like that. They've always been adapting to changing circumstances. 
B.E.: Randy Weston talks about the color blue entering his spirit at a lila in 1969, and since then, he plays his piece “Blue Moses” at every concert. Tell us a little about Sidi Musa, and how this connection to “blue(s)” and the sea makes sense from an African American musician’s perspective. He talks about his entry into the Gnawa culture in terms of attending a lila and being so taken by the songs to Sidi Musa that he was in trance, he said, for a week. “It was so powerful,” and I'm quoting, “that I was in trance for a week." For Randy, it was the color blue, the color of Sidi Musa. Sidi Musa is Moses, who led the Jews out of Egypt. He parted the waters for the Jews, and liberated the Jews from slavery. So it's a very symbolic spirit for Randy because it has to do with slavery, connecting him to the African American experience, but also to liberation, and to water, and to the color blue. Randy starts in the African American diaspora and himself traverses the Atlantic, crossing the waters. The color blue is symbolic, obviously, of the blues, and Randy talks about the fact that Duke Ellington had his piano painted blue. Blue is a very symbolic color and Randy Weston finds himself enchanted and entranced with the spirit of the color blue, and writes a beautiful, beautiful piece called “Blue Moses,” that he plays in every concert without fail everywhere that he is in the world. It's his way of propitiating his spirit. B.E.: Well said.  I think about Lalla Mira. Lalla Mira is associated with the color yellow. She is frivolous. She laughs. Hilarity is her emotion. If you are possessed by Lalla Mira, you understand what hilarity is. If you are possessed by Sidi Hamou, who is the spirit of the slaughterhouse, you know what fear is and what anger is. He is an angry spirit. He is an exacting spirit. It is very, very difficult to be possessed by him. People who are possessed by him are suffering. They are suffering. But propitiation relieves the suffering too. I may be opening a parentheses here, but at the end of a lot of these ceremonies, to watch particularly the women, their attitudes, with their arms up in the air and their eyes rolled back in their head, there is an ecstasy, a freedom and a liberation that comes through this ritual of propitiation and through trancing, which is very physically demanding. This should be said. To trance all night long is a very demanding thing. B.E.: You spoke about heritage as creation, but in an essay I read, you compare heritage to possession. How are they similar? B.E.: I think you are probably familiar with the CDs that are produced in association with the Gnawa Festival at Essaouira. I've got a pile of them here. B.E.: I know. They're almost universally unmarked, complete mysteries. But listening to them, I find some very interesting fusions of Gnawa music with brass bands, guitars, wind instruments, all kinds of things. Looking specifically at the Jazz Gnawa blends, can we say that Randy Weston was a crucial figure in forging that path towards fusion? D.K.: Could be. But he certainly left his mark. B.E.: No doubt. Actually, that was very near the end of his life. But it's very interesting to think that he had that experience. B.E.: That's a good point. Very profound, actually. It's so subtle because on the one hand it is a reaching out, a big international artist reaching out a hand, and helping the Gnawa. But at the same time, there can be an element of condescension, exactly along the lines you describe. And I think the Gnawa, particularly, because their instruments are so much in the lower register, or else percussive, then it becomes almost obvious. Of course it's the rhythm section. Fusion is always a tricky thing. How do you maintain an appropriate level of respect, and still do something that's musically successful and interesting? It's very difficult ground. So these Essaouira collaborations are one stream of fusion is going on. But then we have things like Gnawa Diffusion, Nass el Marrakech, more techno dance music. When you think about those things? B.E.: Do have any favorites? B.E.: Thank you for taking all this time. It’s been fascinating. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9X9Pf1DtMU&feature=related Interview by Banning Eyre New York City,2009 |
