Most people have never heard of Gnawa. Originally you weren't supposed to. For centuries, the music was only played in secret ceremonies by enslaved Black Africans brought to Morocco. Gnawa—an indigenous word for black people— is music born of the suffering of slavery. For many African Americans those rhythms are familiar. What we know as the American Blues evolved from this swirl of ancient African and Islamic rituals. Centuries later, Gnawa is exploding in popularity. Today, hundreds of thousands of music fans make the trek to the ground zero of Gnawa music: the annual festival in Essaouira on Morocco's Atlantic coast. 480 musicians. 16 countries. 50 concerts. How could we say no?
As the sun set over the Moroccan town of Essaouira, the huge crowd grew more impatient. They'd been waiting all day for maalem Hamid El Kasri, a 21st century Gnawa superstar whose playlist dates from the 11th century. El Kasri's back-up singers came on first, wearing the same ornate silk robes and tasseled fezzes the Gnawans have worn for hundreds of years. Finally, the maalem—or master musician—appeared and strapped on his gimbri.
The mother of all basses, the gimbri is made from wood, camel skin, and strung with goat gut. El Kasri started slowly. One of Morocco's top maalems, Hamid El Kasri helped make Gnawa a contemporary force. Soon, he picked up the pace. The Arabic lyrics date from the Middle Ages. And this crowd knew every word.
The music built to a crescendo. It was a pyramid of sound…driven by the pulsating beat of the krakebs—metal castanets—that are played at astonishing speed. This is the musical legacy of enslaved Black Africans brought to Morocco in medieval times. But the story doesn't end here. It's music that traveled out into the Atlantic from the slave ports of Africa and helped give rise to the American blues.
Bob Wisdom: This was a point of departure. It was a place where dramatically Black Americans have a tie to that we don't really know about.
Robert Wisdom is an actor and a Gnawa superfan. You may know him from "The Wire" or the hit show "Barry," but today, he was just Bob. We met on Essaouira's ramparts built stone by stone by enslaved Africans in the seventeen hundreds.
Bill Whitaker: You can trace the blues to here?
Bob Wisdom: You can trace the blues—you can trace the blues to the Black cultures from Senegal, Gambia, Mali, who then traveled North into Morocco, the Black races. When you come here and hear the Gnawa you feel the same thing that we feel with the old-time Blues.
Bill Whitaker: You feel the Blues.
Bob Wisdom: You feel the Blues and that's what Gnawa does.
It's music that seems to rise from the very stones of this ancient walled city. Once a lucrative trading post, slave markets were closed as recently as 1912. Today, fishing boats and tourists crowd the old harbor, a postcard of carefree leisure. But for actor Bob Wisdom, it's the music of Gnawa—embedded in a painful past—that is the town's true spirit.
Bob Wisdom: When I come here, there's a living-ness about this music. It is alive as well as it's ancient. And so all of this music is passed on orally, so it's changing all the time. And it's the same with our blues.
Bill Whitaker: You have called it a portal to the past?
Bob Wisdom: Mmm
Bill Whitaker: What do you mean by that?
Bob Wisdom: It gives us a reminder of of identity, who we are in the larger sense. You know, the the Africanness in our blood.
Wisdom has seen Essaouira's festival grow from a cult following in 1998 to attracting up to 500,000 fans, including Western musicians who want a run at the Moroccan blues. The opening day parade was a free-wheeling mardi gras as more than 200 Gnawa musicians wound their way through the maze of streets. Wisdom greeted old friends, as we watched flying footwork and acrobatics that could rival a circus.
On stage, you could feel the shared mojo between Moroccan and American blues. We saw stylized line steps that reminded us of motown, deep knee drops that James Brown would envy. American percussionist Sulaiman Hakim told us the similarities didn't end there. He told us the gospel-like call and response so key to gnawa was the same as he'd grown up with in Los Angeles.
Sulaiman Hakim: In blues, or funk there is a call and response. So automatically the first time I heard Gnawas, I said, "Wow this sounds like music from back home." And the way that they start turning their heads, it's just like the dances that was done back in the 30s and 40s when you see Duke Ellington, Count Basie, and everybody was dancing, how our parents and grandparents were dan—it's the same thing.
A musical globetrotter, Sulaiman Hakim started his career with legendary jazz drummer and composer Max Roach. But he told us the Gnawa maalems could go toe to toe with anyone. What set the music apart was the castanets.
Sulaiman Hakim: You only hear this in—in Morocco. They have what we call a six-way feeling to it [makes sound to emulate music.] As a musician you're totally wiped away by this pulsation. And it just grabbed me like this. Well you can see, I—I'm a nervous wreck about it. It's—it's just unbelievable. And then..
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