Wednesday, June 22, 2022
Moktar Gania, New Morning, Paris, Friday June 17
Gimbri maestro's soulful Gnawa-power hypnosis spans the way between spiritual Bamana origins and innovative fusion thrills
A hot Friday evening at the New Morning, and Maalem Moktar Gania is in the house and in the mood for healing. Armed with two gimbri bass lutes – wooden traditional and customised electric, both etched in gold glitter – the respected Gnawa master and his qaraqab-clacking, deep-knee-bending sideman took the stage with musicians including guitarist Anoir Ben Brahim and percussionist/arranger Yacine Ben Ali and proceeded to send a largely young French-Moroccan crowd into a chanting, hair flailing frenzy.
This was Gnawa fusion, but not as we know it. Too often the rhythmic blues of Morocco’s Gnawa, the descendants of sub-Saharan Africans, has been overwhelmed by synthetic French-based production – Essaouira’s iconic Gnawa festival has had more than a few earache collaborations. But this Gnawa Soul project, with albums recorded at the new Planet Essaouira studios in Essaouira, the home of Moktar Gania and his late, legendary brother Maalem Mahmoud Guinea, kept tagnawit (pure Gnawa) sounds to the fore. In so doing it deftly displayed the ease with which Gnawa music, given the right sensitive and imaginative musical partners, can absorb and enhance sounds from elsewhere.
The presence of award-winning French saxophonist Geraldine Laurent was a case in point, her improvised lines threading like fairy lights through a net of thudding bass, sympathetic keys, crashing kit drums and the innovative flourishes of Ben Ali on congas, talking drum, upturned gourd and electronic percussion pads. Those who knew threw chants of Arabic-language praise at Gania, whose gimbri-guitar face-offs with Ben Brahim had a winning avuncular machismo, and whose tenor voice – particularly velvety on favourites ‘Kouyou Kouyou’ and ‘Alla A Soudane’, a tune referencing Gania’s Bamana origins – felt like a cure-all. Jumping, whirling, clapping double-time, the audience had Gania beaming in delight, and the tassel on his sideman’s hat spinning like a top.
Read the review of Moktar Gania's Gnawa Soul in the Songlines Reviews Database
