Gnawa

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Gnawa musicians play the drum tbal , which is painted with magical symbols, and the rattle qaraqib . Postcard around 1920

The Gnawa ( French spelling: Gnaoua , Arabic غناوة, DMG ġnāwa in Maghrebian pronunciation) are an ethnic minority in Morocco and are considered the descendants of slaves from western Africa south of the Sahara , where the medieval empire of Gana was located. The Gnawa have certain features of a Sufi brotherhood ( Tariqa ) .

Beliefs

According to their origins, the Gnawa combine the beliefs of Islam with pre-Islamic practices from sub-Saharan Africa, especially from the old kingdom of Mali . The spiritual powers in their special popular Islamic tradition are called al-mluk ("the possessors") because they can take possession of people . The powerful spirits include the jinn (plural ǧnūn , singular male ǧinn , female gehöreninnīa ), widespread in the Islamic faith . Djinns are generally not individualized enough to have their own names. In Morocco there is only a belief in named spirits among the Gnawa and as an exception to the Sufi order of the Hamadscha, where the female spiritual being Aisha Qandisha is venerated. The Gnawa give their Djinn a special ranking and assign them to certain colors, incense substances, dance and melody forms. A symbolic meaning can be made out in the dances, which can be understood as a ritual repetition of an African cosmogony . The world is given an order in the repetition of the cosmic events from the beginning.

Music and ritual

The Gnawa have become known in particular for their rhythmic music. The three main instruments are tbal (barrel drum struck with sticks), sintir (long-necked lute, sound box can be a turtle shell) and gimbri (three-stringed long-necked lute with a rectangular wooden sound box ), plus the metal rattle qarqaba (plural qaraqib ). The music has its original function at night purples or Derdeba - ritual. In this most important ceremony, which consists of music, dances, ritualized taboo breaking and animal sacrifice and which can last for twelve hours, evil spirits are driven away and others are invoked. On the individual level, it fulfills the therapeutic purpose of self-healing for the participants who fall into a trance with the memory of their black African roots. For the community, this ceremony is a symbolic repetition of the creation of the world .

The music created in such contexts is particularly cultivated in the Moroccan coastal city of Essaouira and its surrounding area, where the annual Gnawa Festival also takes place. In the meantime in concert form and separated from its ritual context, it has become a magnet for musicians such as B. Jimi Hendrix , Peter Gabriel or Joe Zawinul . In the band Gnawa Diffusion from Grenoble , French people of Maghreb mix Gnawa influences with rock and reggae . On the basis of Gnawa music, a practice of painting and sculpture emerged that is determined by magical and fantastic ideas.

Gnawa music was also widely received in jazz. The pianist Randy Weston and the saxophonists Pharoah Sanders and Archie Shepp have made recordings with Mahmoud Ghania and other Gnawa musicians.

See also

The name of Bab Agnaou in Marrakech is also traced back to the Berber word gnaoua .

literature

  • Frank M. Welte: The Gnāwa cult. Trance games, necromancy and obsession in Morocco . Lang Verlag, Frankfurt / M. 1990, ISBN 3-631-42273-3 (also dissertation University of Tübingen, 1989).
  • Deborah A. Kapchan: Traveling spirit masters: Moroccan Gnawa trance and music in the global marketplace. Wesleyan University Press, Middletown 2007, ISBN 978-0819568526 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Vincent Crapanzano : The Ḥamadša. An ethno-psychiatric examination in Morocco. Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 1981, p. 171.
  2. ^ The Splendid Master Gnawa Musicians Of Morocco . randyweston.info
  3. ^ Gnawa Music. A true interaction. nytimes.com, September 1, 2002
  4. ↑ Kindred Spirits Vol. 1 . ( Memento from August 17, 2011 in the Internet Archive )