On God’s Mission | Hamid El Kasri

The deep guttural sound of the plucked gimbri is at the heart of Moroccan Gnawa music. And Hamid El Kasri is one of its leading exponents – although he’s not actually a Gnawa. On stage he’s a charismatic figure with his lute decorated with go-faster, go-deeper symbols, his soulful vocals and backing singers in cowrie headdresses and clacking qaraqab (metal castanets). Like a bluesy pentatonic bass, the instrument is the spiritual soul. “The gimbri is like the stick that spurs the ox while ploughing, but it’s also the gimbri that allows the beast to come down again,” said 17th-century Moroccan marabout Sidi as-Ayachi, indicating its function to drive the ceremony on and give subsequent release.

“Of course, the gimbri is what first drew me into this world. It’s the spiritual heart of the music and the trance,” El Kasri says. The most spiritual Gnawa music is that of the lila sessions, a sort of musical healing where various djinn (spirits) are invoked by particular songs and melodies with which they are associated to help cure people’s afflictions. El Kasri performs at these intimate ceremonies as well as at large-scale festivals like the Gnawa World Music Festival in Essaouira and at WOMAD Charlton Park in 2018.

Hamid El Kasri was born in 1961 in Ksar el-Kebir (The Big Castle) in north-west Morocco, not into a Gnawa family. “It was the second husband of my grandmother, a great gimbri player from Sudan, who introduced me to the Gnawa tradition when I was seven. I was captivated and wanted to discover everything I could about Gnawa culture.” 

The Gnawa are descendants of black African slaves (largely Bamana) that were brought into the Maghreb from sub-Saharan Africa from the 17th century. They are acknowledged as masters in transmitting and passing on contact with the ancestral spirits through their music while proclaiming the greatness of Allah. 

Has it ever been a problem for El Kasri, I wondered, not actually being Gnawa? “It’s like God’s mission,” he says, “and if you have the talent then you are allowed to do it. There are some maalems [Gnawa masters] who don’t have the talent, but if you have the talent you are accepted. The Gnawa culture is not easy, but it’s about the soul and if your soul feels it, you just have to practice it.”

El Kasri’s gimbri has a deep and meaty tone. You can hear it particularly well on two tracks of the marvellous collection of five maalems performing intimately on Accords Croisés’ Gnawa Home Songs compilation. “I was searching for an instrument like this for a long time,” he says. “It’s got one of the best timbres I’ve ever had. I was at the Fes Festival a few years ago and somebody brought me the cedar wood.” He explains that the wood is from a tree that is 2,000 years old. That might seem unlikely, but cedars do live that long and still grow in Morocco’s Middle Atlas mountains. 

El Kasri made the instrument himself. “It’s made out of this magic wood, the skin is from the upper neck of a camel and the three strings are from the intestines of a goat. The fact that the gimbri is made of organic things gives it a natural soul that brings it to life,” he says. “Whether I play with amplification or acoustic, it gives the real vibe. The vibes are talking to my soul.”

El Kasri’s instrument is clearly a special one. But any musical instrument only really lives in the hands of its player… and Hamid El Kasri is a great one.

This feature originally appeared in the March 2021 issue of Songlines magazine. Never miss an issue – subscribe today​

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