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 to access audio and video on collective you need real player.A different kind of trance at Morroco’s Gnaoua Festival. The liberatingly repetitive and pulsating Gnaoua sound is Morocco's most distinctive musical export, and the laid-back blue-and-white-painted port of Essaouira has been hosting its own unique festival for a decade now. Most of the gigs are free, happening on a variety of stages in public squares; rarely has a festival been so diverse in its crowd make-up, from an older Islamic mainstream to stripling rebel surf youths, augmented by a healthy dose of alternative tourists. Even though Gnaoua music is fundamentally spiritual, its throbbing essence is easily appreciated by lovers of similar ritualistic qualities in rock and dance music. The festival has invited artists from around the globe, including Senegal's Baaba Maal, Argentina's Minino Garay and our own Asian Dub Foundation, all of whom deliver revelatory sets, the latter two actively engaging with the Gnaoua players onstage via frenzied improvisatory exchanges.  The Gnaoua are descended from black African slaves, but over the centuries there's been a mingling with Arabic and Berber culture. Their ritualistic music can't avoid usage of the trance-word, built up as it is with an intense repetition of call and response vocals, the resonant bassy twang of the three-stringed guimbri providing an equally insistent pulse. The colourfully clad Gnaouis heft large hip-level tbel drums, but most of them line up to clash the ever-present qraqeb metal castanets. There really are sudden moments where you'd swear that banging techno is a true descendant... Most of the significant Maâlems (master musicians) are present, from Marrakech, Casablanca, Rabat and Essaouira itself. Wearing long shiny robes and hats with a long tassel that's perpetually set spinning, the players dance in swaying, hopping and leaping fashion, with complete possession being the prime objective. The listener seeks an unselfconscious abandonment to wild tress-shaking release, with the Gnaoua ritual aiming to harmonise both body and mind. This festival's essence is the meeting of Gnaoua music with outside forms, fusing mostly with jazz players - probably the musical language that's closest in feel.  The best example of stylistic fusion is represented by the collaboration between singer and guimbri player Maâlem Adil Amimi, who rocks out with jazzers from Cuba, Guadeloupe and the US. Amimi has regularly played with musicians from beyond the Gnaoua tradition. "It's exceptionally difficult, especially in situations like last night, where we'd never played together before the performance," he says. "We had no rehearsal, so it was improvised. It's sometimes difficult for the other musicians to grasp the Gnaoua rhythms, but the guimbri is particularly suited to jazz..." Even though their gig occasionally turned into a tense battle between opposing forces, the music would suddenly lock into a sublime unified majesty, completely obliterating any doubts about the fusion process.
Martin Longley
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