Mahmoud Gania - More from the Crazy Drum Kit Session

This post is a sequel to one of the earliest posts on Moroccan Tape Stash back in 2011. That post shared the tape Voix de Casablanca VDC 53, one of the wildest tapes in the Stash - raucous drum kit rolicking and punctuating along with in-your-face breakneck qarqabas, and non-stop thumping guinbri. 

Today I'm sharing VDC 51, which duplicates a fair amount of what's on VDC 53. Of its six tracks, only 3 do not appear completely or partially on VDC 53. These 3 new tracks (A1, B3, and B4) do not feature the outlandish drummer, but from the sound of the mix and the musicians, they sound like they come from the same recording session. Of the 3 overlapping crazy drummer tracks, 2 contain shorter versions of things on VDC 53 (A2 and B1), while one contains extended material not found on VDC 53 (B2).

So in addition to sharing the full version of VDC 51, I'm also sharing an EXPANDED EDITION of VDC 53, incorporating 4 additional glorious minutes of insane drum kit mayhem not featured on the original tape. I was going to call it The Complete Warren Beatty Sessions since, as I noted before, the gentleman pictured on the j-card, who we assume to be the drummer, does bear a resemblance to the actor. However, one holds out hope that there is a VDC 52 cassette out there somewhere that may contain even more drum madness from this session.

VDC 51 shell

Discographic Questions: The two albums VDC 51 and VDC 53 are clearly related - the cassette company is of course the same, the photos show Mâalem Mahmoud in the same clothes at the same studio, and the music on the two tapes appears to come from the same session. However, I do have questions. The cassette shells for both tapes do not read Voix de Casablanca, but rather Fassiphone. The track names listed on each j-card are completely different from the songs featured on each cassette. And the singing doesn't really sound to me like Mâalem Mahmoud. So I have wondered whether in fact these cassettes are matched with the correct j-cards. If it were just one cassette, it would be plausible that the wrong tape ended up in the wrong jewel box at the tape shop one day. However, for the same error to happen to 2 different, clearly related tapes, is a bit much to believe.

So the questions remain: Is this really Mahmoud Gania? Are these tapes really meant to accompany these j-cards? If so, why are the track names wrong? Who is the funky drummer and where can I hear more of him? Maybe we'll learn more, maybe not. At any rate, I hope you enjoy these, and I wish you all a good Ramadan coming up.

L-Gnawi Mahmoud Gania لڴناوي محمود ڴنيا
Voix De Casablanca cassette VDC 51 صوت البيضاء

A1) Allahuma Selliw 3la Nbi Ou S7abu Lillah
       Sala 3lik Ya Nabi
       Marrakchia a Lalla
       Aicha ou Mali
       Moulay Atferrej 3lia
       Salla 3lih
       Malika
A2) Lalla Mira
       Moulati Fatma
       Soussi
       Malika
       Moulay Abdellah Cherif
B1) Salbani 'Awju Koman Aliya
B2) Galuli Toubi
       Wali Moulay Driss
       Tijania
B3) Allah A Baba Mimoun
B4) Mwi A Mwi Wach Qdaw Ila Berhu Bia
       Malika

320 | FLAC

 

L-Gnawi Mahmoud Gania لڴناوي محمود ڴنيا
Voix De Casablanca cassette VDC 53 صوت البيضاء
Moroccan Tape Stash Expanded Edition 2022

 

01) Lalla Mira
       Moulati Fatma
       Soussi
       Malika
       Moulay Abdellah Cherif
       Bouya Ribu
       Lemwima Hada Mektab
       Llahi blik ma blani
       Selliw 'ala Nnbi
       Llah Llah Nabina
02)  Galuli Toubi
       Wali Moulay Driss
       Tijaniya

03)  Jilali Dawi Hali
       Lagnawi Baba Mimoun
04)  Salbani 'Awju Koman 'Aliya
       Lalla L'arosa
       Mulay Abdellah Cherif
       Lalla Fatima Zohra
       Lahbib Sidi Rasul Allah
       Sla u Salam 'alik a ya Taha

320 | FLAC

Said Oueld El Houate Volume 3

If you read my blogposts, you know I'm not always a fan of the keyboard bass that became prevalent in the mid 1990s in Moroccan chaâbi music. Full disclosure - I am a bass player, so my personal preference is for the sound of the bass guitar, operated by a specialist in that instrument, rather than the sound of a keyboard bass, operated by the left pinky finger of a keyboard player who is concentrating on various chord pads and synthetic voice timbres.

That being said, a good keyboardist knows how to excel in all areas, and I often set myself up to eat my own words, so here's a really great chaâbi tape from Said Ould El Houate that uses the trappings of early 21st century chaâbi production to good effect. Yes, it has keyboard bass, but it's in the pocket, funky, and not monotonous. Yes, it has autotuned vocals, but the female backup vocals sound awesome that way. Yes, it has applause from a fake audience connecting each track to the next, but it actually makes for nice segues. Above all, the musical textures remain rich, between Said's grainy vocals and scratchy viola, and the occasional percussive oud or qarqaba to kick the energy up to the next level.

We featured an early, fully acoustic tape of Said Ould El Houate a few weeks ago, but he really made his name with recordings that sound like this one. Enjoy!

Said Ould El Houate سعيد ولد الحوات
Volume 3
Production Said El Houate Vision cassette
late 2000s/early 2010s

1) Bnat El Koliya
بنات الكلية
2) Waleft Chrab والفت الشراب
3) Ktab Liya Nerâak كتاب ليا نرعاك  

4) Al Âita Al Âmaala العيطة العمالة
5) Wahda Tlouhek Lwahda وحدة تلوحك لوحدة
6) Kob Sek Alach Nwasek كب السيك
7) Dawaqni Lhoub Aâdabou دوقني الحب اعذابو
8) Al Saken Al Ârbi Al Bouhali  الساكن العربي البوهالي

320 | FLAC

Maalem Aziz Arradi - 7-Hour Gnawa Lila Recording

Salaam, friends - I just stumbled across a 7-hour (!!) recording of a Gnawa lila from Marrakech/Tamesloht that was posted on the Internet Archive by French musician David Vilayleck. It dates from November 2018 and features Maalem Aziz Arradi from Marrakech. I'm about 3 hours into it, and it's a real gift of a recording. Not because of its sound quality (it was recorded on a smartphone), but because of the pace of the performance and the overall ambiance of the recording.

You can't hear all of the lyrics, the guinbri is a bit buried, the qarqabas are pretty loud, and there's a fair bit of discussion going on among the assembled. In other words, this is what it sounds like to be at a lila. The songs take as long as they require to get where they need to go - or rather, to get people where they need to get to. 

Listen in the player above, or download from the Internet Archive HERE.

Thanks David and Aziz for sharing this recording, and alhamdulillah I found it on good night to be aurally transported away from the shitshow that my country has become.

Samaoui and Soussiya - Simulacra and Standards for Weddings, Parties, Anything

Here's a sampler from the label Sawt Bab Mansour out of Meknes. 4 long tracks each by a different artist. This was released in the sunny spring of 2001 when Orchestre Hamri scored a smash hit with "Samaoui". The song remains popular today. On revisiting the tape, I recognized another song, "Soussia", that is something of a standard at Moroccan parties (at least at the ones I attend in the San Francisco Bay Area). The two songs are quite different, but they share something in common - they both exist within the realm of Moroccan chaabi music, but refer (sometimes with lyrics, sometimes with musical tropes, and sometimes with both) to musical traditions and bodily experiences not native to the chaabi dance floor.

SAMAOUI

In spring 2001, this song was everywhere in Morocco, coming out of every tape deck, played at every wedding. I even heard Hassan Dariouki's aita haouzia group sing it at a soiree for a bunch of ethnomusicologists in Tangier!

In the early days of Moroccan Tape Stash, I wrote about the early 2000s wave of chaâbi hits that made reference to trance or trance brotherhoods:

"I don't mean pop versions of Gnawa or Jilala songs. Rather, I mean NEW songs with lyrics referring to the spirits or to the experience of trance. What struck me as odd was that most of these songs made no musical reference to trance music of the Gnawa, Jilala or other groups. Rather, they fit the basic mold of chaâbi songs, ready to slip into the repertoire of a wedding band with a viola player and a nicely dressed lead singer"

In retrospect, Al Hamri's "Samaoui / Ha Huma Jaw", while featuring smooth smooth vocals and moderne orchestral string glissandos, does actually make some musical references to the trance traditions. The bendir frame drum is being played in the loopy, topsy-turvy, syncopated way that Jilala musicians play it. The solo viola (as opposed to the orchestral strings) has the unusual processed, throbbing sound featured in Said Senhaji's hit "Aicha al Mejdouba" which, as I noted previously, resembles the throb of the Jilala gasba flute. And the cymbals of the tar tambourine are being played in a way that resembles the qarqaba metal clackers used by Jilala and Gnawa musicians. It's still to my ear a strange juxtaposition:



And yet... the song is undeniably catchy! Our local Moroccan DJ played it at the most recent party I attended, and the crowd ate it up! On the dance floor, everyone sang along "Wa Samaoui / Allah idawi / Aw s7ab el 7aaaaaaal". Samaoui is one of the entities invoked during Gnawa ceremonies. "Oh Samaoui / God heals / Oh friends of the traaaaaance / Bring the incense / bring the charcoal burner / I want to trance". Of course, none of us did trance - there was no incense, no ritual specialist, no guinbri, so it was probably for the best. And yet there we were, miming some of the gestures of trance, mouthing signifiers of trance, to a simulacrum of some of the sounds of trance music. And we enjoyed it, like we did 19 summers ago!

SOUSSIA

Another staple of our local Moroccan parties is the second song on this tape, here called "Soussia". The term soussia is a noun/adjective that refers to something or someone (female) from the Moroccan Souss region. I don't know whether there is an "original" version of this song, but if there is, I'm guessing this is not it. I've never known a proper title for the song - I just think of it as "A Mwi Lalla", or "that Berber-sounding song that gets sung at non-Berber parties".

In this version, sung by Mustapha Baidou, a metal percussion instrument sounds like a naqqus, drums sound like those used in ahwach performances, melody is based in the Soussi pentatonic scales. Yet the lead singer has that smooth delivery of a wedding band singer, and we again hear orchestral string phrases. And at the end of the track, the music shifts into typical chaabi taârida riffing, dropping the pentatonic mode and the naqqus sound.



A quick Google search for chaabi songs called "Soussia" revealed not the same song, but different songs that featured similarly Soussi-styled melodies (pentatonic) and musical tropes (drum timbres, naqqus-sounding percussion, sometimes a synth banjo), typically with lyrics in darija (Moroccan Arabic). An example:



As "Samaoui" invites dancers to simulate the hair-flipping, head-bopping of Jilala or Gnawa trance on a chaabi dance floor, when "Soussia" songs get played, dancers' movements immediately shift from the hips to the shoulders, simulating the style of an ahwach dance.

WEDDINGS, PARTIES, ANYTHING

Trance- and Soussi-styled songs make sense in the repertoire of a well-rounded Moroccan urban Arabophone wedding/party band. When you're playing at a party that goes on for hours, you want to be able to vary things up and pace the event. Wedding parties usually start off with slow and stately music to welcome and ease people into the event. So a wedding band should know at least one or two songs from the Andalusi and/or melhun repertoire to provide this function, as well as some long-form chanson moderne classics from the likes of Abdelwahab Doukkali or Abdelhadi Belkhayat. Wedding musicians don't need to be experts in those repertoires - just need to do a passable job on a couple of songs. They will probably throw in some well-known Middle Eastern hits from Egypt or Lebanon early on, to mix up the groove and allow dancers to mix up their moves. But eventually the floor succumbs to the inexorable pull toward the infectious chaabi beat.

Chaabi (literally, "popular"), is a wide field, that ranges from urbane Andalusi melodies to country aita-based melodies and regional varieties, from simmering slow jams to raucous, explosive bangers, from Houcine Slaoui classics from the 1940s to Hamid Zahir hits from the 1960s to Najat Aatabou hits from the 1980s to Daoudi hits from the 2000s to the latest offerings on YouTube. The viola and the darbuka reign supreme. Ouds may or may not appear. (Of course a keyboard can give you that plucked-string sound, and double as a qanun zither, a banjo, or a horn section too.) Chords were once provided by electric guitars, but those have given way to keyboards as well. But whatever the origins or musical textures of songs may be, chaabi performers slot them into musical suites that inevitably end up with the climactic, raucous, joyful 6/8 groove.

Musics come in and out of the urban wedding band repertoire as the years roll on. When rai music was popular in the 1990s, you sometimes heard a few rai songs at weddings. I'm told that in the 1980s, wedding bands would sometimes have some Bollywood tunes ready (or perhaps some faux-Bollywood-styled chaabi tunes?) in case the bride's array of costumes included an Indian-styled outfit. In my day, said array typically included a Berber-styled outfit, so some Berber-styled songs come in very handy in the repertoire for the moment the bride switches to that outfit.

So "Soussi" songs serve a function within a wedding band repertoire, accompanying a particular moment in the itinerary of the bride's clothing trajectory. On another level, they release the dance floor, temporarily, to a different way of celebrating, a different way for the body to let loose and move. This is also the case with chaabi pop-trance songs like "Samaoui" - the dance floor is given over, momentarily, to trance movements and lyrics, letting people groove and move in a different way. But the chaabi imperative eventually brings the floor back from these excursions. Both "Samaoui" and "Soussia" on this tape finish up with an exit from Soussi- and trance-styled lyrics and sounds, bringing it all back home chaabi-style.

Weddings, parties, anything - and trance and Soussi jams a speciality...

Sawt Bab Mansour presents صوت باب منصور يقدم
Samaoui السماوي
Sawt Bab Mansour cassette, 2001

Al Hamri الحمري
    1) Samaoui السماوي
    2) Ha Huma Jaw هاهما جاو
    3) Shera3 oul Qanun الشراع و القانون

Mustapha Baidou مصطفى بايدو
    1) Soussia السوسية

Âbd al Hamid عبد الحميد
    1) Almajdoubiate المجدوبيات
    2) Sidi ouel Qalb M3akoum سيدي والقلب معاكم
    3) Galuli Ghir Ensah كلولي غير انساه

Al Berbouchi البربوشي
    1) 3lach A Lalla علاش الالة
    2) Ouahia Almra Ouahia واهيا المراة واهيا

Get it all HERE.

PS - I patched a couple of short dropouts in the Al Hamri and Al Berbouchi tracks with versions found on YouTube.

Ashura Upgrade - Daqqa Marrakchiya

Here's a slight upgrade to a tape I shared a few years ago. I wanted to share some more of the great Daqqa Marrakchiya music that gets played in the streets of Marrakech on Ashura, and I knew I had another tape.

The downside was that the tape turned out to be the same one that I shared previously. The upside was that there was different, equally great j-card art, and that the tape flip and in/out points were different.

I patched the two together, so here is a slight upgrade that adds an additional great 20 seconds of music and that can now be heard as a single track uninterrupted by a tape flip.

I like it when Islamic and Jewish holidays line up together. This year both new New Years came in at the same time, as did Ashura and Yom Kippur. Wishing blessings, reflection and inspiration to all.

Dekka de Marrakech (الدقة المراكشية)
Majmuât ad-daqqa al-marrakchiya (مجموعة الدقة المراكشية)
under the direction of al Hajj Muhammad Baba (برئاسة الحاج محمد بابا)
Sawt el Haouz (صوت الحوز) cassette S.H. 38
slight upgrade


Dekka de Marrakech - excerpt

Get it all here.

For more info on Daqqa Marrakchiya, see Wikipedia (fr) and Moroccan Tape Stash.

3 hours of Gnawa music from 1966

Those of you with a taste for field recordings may enjoy perusing the online collection of CREM (Centre de Recherche en Ethnomusicologie), housing the audio archives of the CNRS and the Musée de l’Homme. Much of this vast audio archive of commercial and unpublished recordings is available for online listening.

I'm currently enjoying a remarkable collection of recordings made by one Mohammed Aït Youssef in Marrakech in 1966, featuring over 3 hours of Gnawa music:

http://archives.crem-cnrs.fr/archives/collections/CNRSMH_I_1968_021/

The online documentation does not indicate the name of the performer, but I believe it is the Gnawi Ahmed ben Lahcen.

He can be heard in some of Cafe Matich's YouTube uploads of recordings from Marrakech's Djemaa el Fna plaza:



It is certainly the same Gnawi that is heard in Gerard Kremer's recordings for Arion (released 1975):



Some of the recordings in the CNRS collection appear to have been made in the Djemaa el Fna plaza. Others, perhaps not - it's difficult to say. At any rate, it's a great collection of recordings - a lot of Ouled Bambara and Negsha songs, some with clapping, some with qarqaba, a few tracks of drumming and qarqaba-ing. (Almost no mluk trance songs, though.) There are also a few tracks of odds and ends. 08-03 features the bells of Djemaa el Fna water sellers. 07-01 is a drum and qarqaba song featuring the ismkhan (also known as âbid chleuh - Berber-speaking Gnawa who have a repertoire completely separate from that of the more well-known Arabophone Gnawa), and 07-02 is entitled "Solo de flûte Gnawa". The latter track sounds to me like an instance of the Soussi Berber style of âwad flute. Perhaps it's a Gnawi musician who doubles on flute - I've never heard of a discrete Gnawi flute tradition or repertoire, but the world is full of musical surprises, so perhaps I'm wrong!

I couldn't find any information about the researcher Mohamed Ait Youssef, what sort of research he was doing, or how his recordings ended up in the CNRS archive. The archive contains other recordings of his dating from1965 and 1968. These recordings, also from Marrakech, feature several different genres (as well as a few more Gnawa tracks). Whatever his story may have been, it's wonderful that he left us such extensive recordings, and that CNRS has shared them online.

CNRS Collection: Maroc, Marrakech; Musique de confrérie. Enregistrements sonores inédits réalisés par Mohammed Aït Youssef au Maroc (Marrakech), en 1966: http://archives.crem-cnrs.fr/archives/collections/CNRSMH_I_1968_021/

Âita With Guinbri Really Shouldn't Work, But Tagada...

Well whaddya know? The Stash yields another Tagada tape! This dates from around 1992, when Mohamed Louz was still a member of the group. (For some historical info on the group, see our previous Tagada post.)

I wrote previously that Tagada's folk-revival approach was rooted in the âita. This album stretches things a bit, while maintaining a core texture of viola driving the melody, male group or antiphonal vocals and a bendir-driven percussion section.

"Lalla Lgada" leads things off in a typical âita mode, though with what sounds like scissors hearkening back to the âbidat errma. The strange "Ach Ngoul Lik" leads off with a pentatonic viola solo somewhat evoking the amarg tradition of the Soussi rwayes, but then the rhythm enters, featuring a Gnawa guinbri (and some faint qraqeb, I think). It sounds sort of Nass el Ghiwan-ish, except for the continued presence of the viola, which pulls the sound in a different direction. "Âyyitini" goes full Soussi, adding a banjo or lotar and naqqus for that rwayes vibe, though the singing is in Arabic, not Tachelhit.

Finally "Hada Hali" returns viola and bendir to the center of the texture with a real deep âita feel - angular bendir-s, alternating solo vocals evoking shikha song, sliding eventually into trance-based and trance-evoking lyrics, idiomatic viola riffing recalling the sweaty middle-of-the-night when the âita groove gets so heavy and REAL that it crosses over into that zone where all one can do is call prayers upon the Prophet and the saints, hope for deliverance and submit to the groove. At this point in the song, Tagada incorporate the guinbri and qraqeb again. This sounds nothing like Gnawa music, though, resembling much more the saken trance songs of the âita tradition. But with Gnawa signifiers added for intensification? Mixing these elements together is a weird, improbable idea, to which I'm sort of opposed on principle, and yet somehow... it kind of works! Well played, Tagada, well played!



Tagada (تگدة) Edition Hassania cassette EH 1462
01 Lalla Lgada (لالة الگادة)
02 Ach Ngoul Lik (اش نگول ليك)
03 Âyyitini (عيتني)
04 Hada Hali (هذا حالي)

Get it all here.

Al Hadri Hamid - Non Stop Soussiya

Here's a tape from Meknassi mâllem Hamid al-Hadri. Another tape of his, available in the Stash here, features songs from the opening Ouled Bambara section of the Gnawi lila ceremony. This tape features songs from the very end of the ceremony.

The tape opens with "Lalla Malika", part of the suite of Yellow songs/spirits from the end of the trance phase of the lila. al-Hadri then segues directly into the Soussiya 'popular' repertoire with which Gnawa typically close the night-long ceremony. (I wrote a little bit on Soussiya songs in this early blog post.) And he keeps going, non-stop, for the rest of the album, which fades out at the end of Face B.

This is a nice and unusual tape of Soussiya songs. In performance, Soussiya songs are typically given over to dancing, and are usually pretty raucous. Their light-hearted, fun nature feels like a collective sigh of relief and celebration from musicians, participants and spectators, coming after a long night of plumbing the depths and dreads of the Gnawa palette of colors, spirits and grooves. So it's unusual here that once "Lalla Malika" is finished and we move into Soussiya proper, the qraqeb metal percussion devices drop away, leaving just the guinbri, clapping and vocals. In my experience in Marrakech, the qraqeb get LOUDER during the Soussiya, since more people tend to get up and dance at that point, and they want that driving rhythm that the qraqeb provide. Maybe it's a Meknes thing for the qraqeb to drop out. Or just a quirk of this recording. At any rate, the singing is easy to hear and understand, for a change, so it's nice to get a good earful of these fun songs.

Al Hadri Hamid - Tahiri Disque 103

Excerpt from Track 2 (of 2)

Get it all here.

Groupe Iâachaken (ft. Omar Sayed) Vol. 2&3 - Who's Gonna Pull the Cart?

Two more lovely tapes today from Groupe Iâachaken. Like their first album, Iâachaken's second and third albums feature the participation of Nass el Ghiwane's Omar Sayed. I wish I could decode the image of the donkey cart on the 2 accompanying j-cards. On 1993's Magarn Ifassen, Omar Sayed is pulling the entire group, who sits on the cart. On 1994's Mani Nhra, the roles are reversed, and Groupe Iâachaken is pulling him, though apparently Omar achieves this turnaround by dangling a television in front of them. Make of it what you will...

These albums were released on Edition Sonya Disque, a label out of Casablanca whose tapes I first saw in 1993 and who released a lot of music in the '90s and beyond. Nass el Ghiwane released albums on the label and Paco released solo albums on it. Najat Aatabou put out some albums with the label as well.

Magarn Ifassen features qarqaba on several tracks, ramping up the group's generally laid-back feel a bit. The last tune on Mani Nhra, unlike anything else by the group, features ambient keyboard accompanying Omar Sayed's opening mawwal . It's a strange combination - the folk-revival acoustic instruments with the modern sheen of a synthesizer, but it works nicely here. (Much better than it does on a bizarre Nass el-Ghiwane tape I have...). And Omar's mawwal is an interesting one - the vocal ornamentations sound Indian in places. Quite lovely.

By the way, it's nice to hear Omar singing and reciting in Tachelhit. Nass el Ghiwane had never recorded a song in Berber.  News stories last summer indicated that a new album would soon be released, featuring their first-ever song in Berber. However, I've seen no further information about the album. Has anybody heard any news about the album's delay?

From the j-card of Magarn Ifassen:
Lyrics: Lamghari Hamid
Music: Farouq Saîd
Arrangement: Omar Sayed

Groupe Iâachaken - Magarn Ifassen (Edition Sonya Disque 325)
01) Magarn Ifassen (ft. Omar Sayed)
02) Gar Amoudi

03) Tifawin
04) Timila
   Get it here.

Groupe Iâachaken - Mani Nhra (E.S.D. 490)
01) Mani Nhra (ft. Omar Sayed)
02) Our Nsendem Yan
03) Issegueassn
04) Illi Hna (ft. Omar Sayed)

    Get it here.
 

Ashura in Marrakech - Daqqa Marrakchiya

In honor of Ashura, which is celebrated this week, I'm breaking away momentarily from my series of Jbala posts to return to my beloved Marrakech.

Here's a swell tape of daqqa marrakchiya, a fantastic genre performed especially for Ashura, famously in Marrakech (though its roots are apparently in Taroudant).

It's surprisingly difficult to find video examples of it online. The only one I could find is this snippet from the streets of Marrakech, apparently from the Sidi Youssef quarter:



It's performed by large groups of men, most of them with a taârija drum, with one man on a pair of qraqeb. It starts slooooooooooooooow and heavy with looooooong poetic stanzas.  Eventually it builds in speed, the rhythms become less complex, and ends with a raucous, deafening section in good 'old 6/8.

It seems like many Moroccans use the term daqqa marrakchiya to refer to what I knew in Marrakech as dqiqiyya or tkitikat - i.e., men's perussion/party ensembles:



These groups are great fun, but should not be confused with the daqqa I'm presenting here.

Etymological excursion: I'm pretty sure the names of these percussion groups are diminutive forms of the names of other Moroccan genres: dqiqqiya being a diminutive form of daqqa, and tkitikat sounding like a diminutive form of taktouka (about which, more next week).

Back to the real daqqa: In bygone days, each neighborhood in Marrakech had its own daqqa group that would perform all night, outdoors, on the night of Ashura. The rhythm of the long, slow opening section (the âayt), is a lopsided thing. It alternates 3 bangs on the taârija with 4 bangs, and each grouping is separated by a clack of the qarqaba whose delivery is streeeeeeeetched out beyond any reasonable sense of meter. Very striking stuff - check the excerpt below for a bit from the beginning and a bit from the end of the tape.

If you like the sound of this, (and I know you do), try to find a copy of the CD La Daqqa: Tambours sacrés de Marrakech. It's a lovely 62 minute recording (one single track!), with excellent performers.

Dekka de Marrakech: Majmuât ad-daqqa al-marrakchiya under the direction of al Hajj Muhammad Baba
Excerpts from sides 1 and 2


Get it all here.

PS - I love the blue Sawt al Haouz cassette shell:

Not forgetting the logo featuring the Koutoubia:

And the Doctor Who-ish psychedelic j-card design. Nuff said.

Ahwach from Tafraout

Here's a swell recording of ahwach, the communal song-dance-drum tradition of the Tachelhit-speaking Imazighen/Berbers of southern Morocco. Rhythms and forms change from region to region and tribe to tribe. The ensembles can be huge - there are 30 people pictured on this j-card. It's a big, rhythmic sound!

Since the group's name refers to it, I assume they come from the city of Tafraout. As Mr. Tear points out in comments to another ahwach post at Awesome Tapes from Africa, the rock pictured here (and on Awesome Tapes' cassette) is called Le Chapeau de Napoléon and is just outside of Tafraout. He also mentioned that Tafraout is host to the annual Tifawin Festival. This cassette's j-card includes the logo from that festival, but it doesn't sound to me like a live recording.

I've never been down to that area of Morocco, and my only experience of live ahwach has been at the annual Festival National des Arts Populaires in Marrakech ("the folklore festival"), where 20 groups each get a 5-minute performance slot. It's an impressive show, but you know you're only getting the highlight reel, as a typical ahwach performance goes on much longer. Someday I hope I'll have the chance to see a performance at a wedding or other community event rather than on a festival stage. Here's a short clip of this group's singer in such a performance:

Ahwach Argan Tafraout - Othman Azolid & Al Hajj Âabd o Tata - Ttamza Music cassette


Track 3 (of 3) - excerpt

Get it all here.

More Vintage Mahmoud Guinia

Here's a couple more vintage cassettes of Maalem Mahmoud Guinia. These are released on the Fikriphone label out of Agadir. The other Fikriphone cassette I posted of Mahmoud (FP25) was purported to be his first commercial release, so I'm guessing these are also quite old. Unlike that album, which appears to have been recorded live at a lila, these tapes are studio recordings and feature a tam-tam drum in addition to the guinbri and qraqeb.

I'm uploading them together because the track names on the j-cards don't match the songs on either cassette - some songs listed on 42 appear on 41 and vice versa, some songs listed don't appear at all, and some songs on the cassettes aren't listed at all.

Here's my track listing:
FP41:
1) Allah Allah Bulila
2) Yumali Ye Yumala
3) La ilaha illa Llah
4) Fulani Baba Sidi


FP42:
1) Ya Sudani Bangara Bangara
2) Lalla Maymouna Sultan Gnawiya
3) Lalla Fatima Zahra - Shay Llah Dar Dammana
4) 'Awwenuna Rijal Allah Baba L'Arabi
5) Soyo Soyo Kamilana

Get 'em here.

PS - audio sample coming soon - divshare upload seems to be down...

Hassan Baska - Fiery Tagnawit and a little Gnawa Blues

Here's a solid cassette from Hassan Baska and group. I wrote a bit about Hassan and his brothers in my post on Muluk el Hwa last week. This tape is from around Y2K. Tracks 1, 3 and 4 are straight-up, fiery Marrakchi tagnawit (that is, music from the Gnawa ritual repertoire). Quite nicely recorded, and high in energy. (Marred slightly by vocals going sharp on the first piece of track 3). The lead vocalist sounds to me like it could be Ahmed Baska rather than Hassan, but I'm not sure.

Track 2 is an unusual gem, featuring 2 songs I believe to be originals. (They're certainly not from the tagnawit repertoire.) "Mamayo" features a darbuka in addition to guinbri and qraqeb. It is sung in a blues pentatonic (rather than the typical Gnawi pentatonic) and in a typical Maghrebi 2/4. In the second piece "Sudani Mani Zara", guinbri and qraqeb lock into a blues-swing groove! (totally weird - totally works!) There are so many overblown Gnawa fusions - this one is about as simple as it gets, and is all the more sweet for it! The vocalist is different on this track than on the rest of the album. I think it may be Hassan singing here and Ahmed on the other tracks, but again, I could be wrong.

 

Discographic note: I own 2 cassettes of Hassan Baska. The j-cards for both read "Edition Safi Disque". The cassette shells for both read Sawt al-Kawakib. Go figure...

1) Kohl (incl. Mimouna, Ghumami, Marhaba)
2) Mamayo - Sudani Mani Zara

3) Shorfa (incl. Hadiya, Ali ya Ali)
4) Salihin (incl. Jilala, La ilaha illa Llah Jilala, Jilali Boualem, Jilali Dawi Hali)

Get it here.

3 hours of Marrakchi Gnawa Lila audio!

Dig it! GnawaMaVie's channel on YouTube has some great Gnawa audio (including some things I've posted on this blog). One fantastic series of clips presents 3 hours worth of audio from a Gnawa lila. The notes say it features Maalem Mustapha Baqbou and Maalem Abbas Baska. I put the 25 clips into a playlist so you'll can listen to them in the correct order. It's not an entire lila (it's missing the entire Buhala, Kohl, Ghabawyin and 3ayalat, as well as pieces of the other suites listed below), but I'm not complaining!

For me, this sort of Gnawa tape blows doors on any studio recording - this is Gnawa music at its organic best - when the music ebbs and flows, expands and contracts in accordance with the vibe in the room, the particular mix of people in attendance, and the needs of trancers.

Entire playlist is embedded above. Individual links are below. Many thanks to GnawaMaVie for sharing these recordings!

Ouled Bambara
Salat ala nabina
Soudani + Baniya
Folane Nhiriza + Youbadi
Boulila + Chabagrou

Negsha
Nekecha
Lala Fatima + Koubayli
Rabi moulay + Lah lah Moulana
Zid el Male + Youmala

Ftih ar-Rahba
Ftouh Rahba
Ftouh Rahba 2
Hamadi
Hamadi 2

Salihin
Jilala

Musawyin
Sidi Moussa
Lmoussaouine
Koubaili Bala
Bala Mousa + La_Ilaha_Illa_Allah_Mousa

Humr
Bori Ya Bori + Baniya
Hamouda
Sidi Koumi

Shorfa
Lhadiya
Ali Ya Ali
Bouchama + Moulay 'Abdallah
Moulay 'Abdallah Ben Hsein & Moulay 'Brahim
Moulay Hamed

Jilala & 'Aita Down at Bir Jdid - Mohammed L3aouina

Here's one of my fave cassettes - a particularly fierce Jilala tape for ya. Picked this up in the mid-'90s, I think in Marrakech or thereabouts. The tape is from Bir Jdid (which I had to look up on Google) - it's between Casablanca and El Jadida.

The tape doesn't say "Jilala" anywhere on it, but the tunes have that same throb and rasp that identify the Jilala groove. In addition to the gasba flutes and bendir frame drums, you'll hear some qarqaba metal clappers on the tunes labeled "Buwwab". These songs invoke some of the spirits associated with the Gnawa, who are the main users of the qarqaba.

In addition to the trance material (Sidi Slimane, Sidi Chamharouch, Buwwab), the tape also contains "Al-3aloua", a piece usually associated with aita / shikhat. The recording of this song (as well as track 6, another song that seems to be non-Jilala) features only a single gasba, rather than 2. The use of 2 gasba-s adds a loopy dimension to the sound and seems appropriate to the trance material. Whatever the aesthetics of trance textures vs. non-trance textures may be, it is certainly true that most musicians working with trance repertoires also perform other non-trance genres, and that seems to be the case with this ensemble.

Enjoy!

1) Intro
2) Chamharouche (? i guess. I can't hear the name in the lyrics, but it is written on the j-card, but then again, the tracks are all out of order too...
3) Sidi Slimane

4) Al Buwwab 1 (edited together from end of side 1 and beginning of side 2)
5) Al Buwwab 2
6) Track 6
7) Al 3aloua

Get it here.

Al-Hadri Hamid - Riffin' the Ouled Bambara, Meknes-Style

Hard days in the music blogosphere. Sad to find the great Holy Warbles took a hit, though I have no doubt that the Owl will rise again! Hope I can continue sharing with you here. I try to keep my posts to music that is out of print and/or impossible to find. Thanks Gary at Bodega Pop for his thoughtful and passionate comments.

Carrying on with another Gnawa cassette for ya, this one picked up in Meknes c.1999. In the popular imagination (within Morocco and without...) Gnawa are associated primarily with Essaouira (where they are heavily promoted/exploited by the tourist industry) and Marrakech (where they probably exist in the greatest numbers of any Moroccan city). However, Gnawa practices and the musicians who animate them can be found in cities across Morocco, from Tangier to Oujda to Merzouga to Agadir...

The Meknes Gnawa tradition is well established and well documented.  It appears to be more prominent than that of neighboring Fez. Perhaps the presence in Meknes of the zawiya (shrine) of the Hadi ben Aissa, patron saint of the Aissawa brotherhood, makes Meknes more conducive to trance-music practitioners. Still, Gnawa from Meknes have rarely been featured in international or even nationwide recordings. One recent exception is Maalem Abdenbi el Meknassi.

I don't know anything about the performer here, al-Hadri Hamid, though I have another cassette from Meknes that I believe features him as well. This tape is all Ouled Bambara - that is, it features songs from the opening phase of the lila ceremony. Unusually, they are performed here with qarqaba rather than with the interlocking clapping that is typical of this phase. Some of the typical Ouled Bambara songs are featured here (Bangara Bangara, Chalaba Titara, etc.).  But there are also some rarely performed pieces, including a version of Tintinbara, which traditionally features a very funny pantomime where a Gnawi dancer (male) dresses up as a pregnant woman.

1) Tsiyyisa - Fangoro Fangoro - Amara Yobadi - Sidi L'-Afu Shshiyat Ammar
2) Berrma Sutanbi - Fulan Walina - Sawiye - Ye Llah Sawiye
3) Yobadi
4) Lalla L-Wa'riqma - Jellaba Titara - Jellaba Tiktu - Berkat a Husa
5) Kalkani Bulila
6) L-'Aribi 1 (Wayli a wayli) - L-'Aribi 2 (L'Aribi kum kum kum)
7) Allah Yobadi Sadiyariyara 1 - Allah Yobadi Sadiyariyara 2

8) Baniya yar kama - Allah Mitara Chkam Bambara - Wahyana waye - 'Ar Allah 'Ar N-nbi - Sadi w-Llah - Serku Balaji ya Huma - Tintinbara - Allah ya Mbwirika, Siydek rah ja (take 1)

9) Allah ya Mbwirika, Siydek rah ja (take 2)

Get it here.

Hmida Boussou - Subtle and Serious Guinbri Sounds

OK - enough with the Pokémon you say? Scraping the bottom of the stash? Au contraire! If chaabi Pokémon ain't your style, consider it an audio palate cleaning, a slice of picked ginger on your sushi platter, to get your ears ready for some full-on tagnawit sounds.

The late Hmida Boussou (of Casablanca, but with roots in Marrakech) was a serious, deep Gnawi maalem. His guinbri spoke volumes, and we're lucky to have some fantastic recordings of him in the Al Sur 5-disc Gnawa Leila series. He didn't record many commercial cassettes in Morocco. This is one of only a couple that I've seen. It appears to date from the 1980s, though it's hard to say for sure. I picked it up around '93, and it's a great one.

The guinbri is prominent in the mix but not distractingly so. One of my pet peeves with Gnawa recordings and electrified performances is that the guinbri is sometimes too far up front in the mix, destroying the dynamic tension between the sound of the guinbri and that of the incessant, clattering qraqeb. That being said, Maalem Hmida's playing is so subtle and consistent that it withstands being so "naked" in the mix. (This is also the case on disc 1 one of the Al Sur series.)

Discographic note: J-card lists the cassette publisher as "Sawt er Rbi3", but cassette shell reads Edition el Kawakib. Song titles, however, appear to be correct.

With a couple of exceptions (Sadie Fulani Hiriza and Wahyana Waye), nothing here duplicates anything Maalem Hmida plays in the Al Sur series.

1) Ouled Bambara (includes Chalaba Titara, Sadie Fulani Hiriza, Wahyana Waye)

2) L3afou Moulana (climax of the Ftih ar Rahba suite. Performed atypically here with interlocking clapping rather than with qraqeb.)

3) 3aicha l-Hamdouchia (includes Baba L-Ghumami, Sidi Muhammad ya Suba3i, Marhaba ya Mimoun Marhaba, 3aicha L-Gnawiya, 3aicha Qandisha) 

Get it here.