Ouled Babara: Portraits of Gnawa

Gnawa music is that of the ritual tradition known in Morocco as tagnawit, "the craft of the Gnawi." The Gnawa are the practitioners of this tradition, be they the musicians or the initiates and clairvoyants who sponsor ceremonies and trance to the music. While some consider the Gnawa to be an underclass in Moroccan society, they play a vital role in its spiritual life and cultural diversity. Recorded and filmed in Marrakech in 2005, Ouled Babara: Portraits of Gnawa is an exploration of that role through profiles of some of it's most talented musicians.

Ouled Babara: Portraits of Gnawa is REAL world music played on a live 'stage' in an intimate setting that feels as though the musicians are sitting in front of you as part of the ceremony. It's awesome spiritual stuff composed of nine separate tracks on CD and a thirty-five minute exploration of several performances on DVD. While this set is not a definitive anthropological study of the Gnawa, Ouled Babara: Portraits of Gnawa presents a deep enough understanding of the culture and ritual to make the both the disc and dvd as educational as it is entertaining.

This is music rooted in such tradition that you can feel the history in each one of these performances. Predominiantly percussive with chants trailing behind, much of Ouled Babara: Portraits of Gnawa is hypnotic and trance inducing. Call it organic chill out, this is music originally created by the Gnawa for for people to come to terms with the Jinn (an invisible force). It's intimacy and roughness is all part of the tradition and it's what makes Ouled Babara: Portraits of Gnawa so interesting.

Ouled Babara: Portraits of Gnawa is a brilliant quick study of a trational form of music very rarely heard by western audiences. This is folk music in the purest sense, but not in a western way. Ouled Babara: Portraits of Gnawa is filled with traditional Moroccan music that's used as a form of communication between mankind and those that cannot be seen. It's spiritual music that is as old as time and is passed on from musician to musician. It's very enjoyable material and for anyone in touch with their inner-musicologist Ouled Babara: Portraits of Gnawa will be a journey into forms of music not attuned to modern western culture.