'It's A Healing Sound'

Why Moroccan gnawa music continues to seduce Western artists, from Hendrix to Holden

- John Lewis

MOROCCO has long been a fixture on the hippie trail. counter cultural pioneers Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs and Timothy Leary rhapsodised about the place in the ’50s and ’60s; Lennon, Led Zeppelin and Graham Nash holidayed in Marrakesh, while Brian Jones famously collaborated with Sufi trance musicians near Morocco’s northern coast.

On the other side of the country, however, rockers such as Frank Zappa, Jefferson Airplane and Jimi Hendrix visited the small Atlantic coastal town of Essaouira and were entranced by the music they heard in the kasbah, made by the descendants of sub- Saharan slaves brought to North Africa by Arab traders centuries earlier. It’s called gnawa, a hypnotic racket made using metallic castanets (krakebs), a large drum (tbel), and acoustic bass (guembri).