Samaoui, Gnaoua Radio

Initially a trance and a spirit possession ritual, Gnaoua art has become a music of the world capable of merging with the most demanding genres of music like Jazz. “Tagnawite” has lately enjoyed a worldwide popularity thanks mainly to Essaouira Gnaoua Festival. In the footsteps of Reggae, it is more than a mere music but a way of living-togetherness…a vision of the world. Originally, the Gnaoua music tended to liberate the speech of islamized subsaharean slaves in Morocco. The spirit possession ritual is a musical crescendo at an increasingly lively tempo, accompanied by the fumigation of benzoin, with approximately six distinct stations recognizable by their chromatic values: black, blue, red, white, green and yellow.Nowadays, this widely creolized culture is open to the world and has become “secularized”, which makes it very attractive to many musicians, namely African-Americans.