Gnawa

Gnawa music is the ritual music of the Gnawa people of Morocco, descendants of West Africans brought north across the Sahara, and is built around the guembri, a three-stringed bass lute whose deep, percussive sound anchors ceremonies of healing and spirit invocation. A master musician, the maalem, leads call-and-response singing in Moroccan Arabic and Bambara-derived languages, accompanied by metal qraqeb castanets, handclaps and drums, driving rhythms that intensify toward trance. Preserved in the all-night lila ceremony and carried worldwide by masters such as *Maleem Mahmoud Gania*, gnawa has also become a foundation of Moroccan popular music.