Gnawa

What it is

A lila runs all night. It is a ceremony of the Gnawa, descendants of people taken north across the Sahara into Morocco, and its music belongs to the maalem, a master who plays the guembri: a three string bass lute with a camel skin face and a body you strike with the same hand that plucks. Around him a line of players work the qraqeb, iron castanets held two to a hand, and the suites move through the night in a fixed order. Most of that music is in six, which a grid of sixteenth notes cannot write. What is below is the duple half, the sections where the cycle straightens into four and the guembri settles onto a three three two, and that is the half that has travelled into records by Maalem Mahmoud Guinia, Nass El Ghiwane and everyone who has sampled them since.

What it sounds like

Low, metallic and completely dry. The guembri covers the bottom two octaves on its own, plucked hard with the thumb striking the skin at the same moment, so every note arrives with a slap on it. The qraqeb are loud, continuous and indefinite in pitch, a wall of iron clacking that no recording ever quite tames. Handclaps come from everybody in the room. In the street processions there is also a tbel, a double headed drum carried on a strap and beaten with a curved stick. There is no kit, no hi-hat and no melodic instrument other than the guembri and the voices, which sing call and response with the maalem leading.

Key elements

• The guembri as the kickThe low string plus a thumb slap on the body is a bass note and a drum stroke at the same time. Six of them a bar, grouped three, three and two, and that is the entire low end of the music.
• The three three twoBeat 1, the a of 1, the and of 2, then beat 3, the a of 3 and the and of 4. It is the same cell kuduro runs elsewhere in this file, at two thirds the speed and with the accents put somewhere else.
• Qraqeb on every sixteenthIron castanets running unbroken through both bars, near 70 on the beats, near 58 on the ands and in the middle forties on every e and a. They do not stop for anything, including the singing.
• Handclaps for the backbeatBeats 2 and 4 from everyone present, with a stroke at the end of the bar to turn it. There is no snare in this grid and nothing marking the backbeat except hands.
• The tbelA stick drum from the street processions, adding four accents in bar one and six in bar two on sixteenths the guembri is not using.

How to get them

• GuembriA three string bass lute plucked with the fingers while the heel of the hand strikes the skin face. If you are substituting, layer a short bass sample with a soft kick so every note carries a slap.
• QraqebIron castanets, two to a hand, played continuously. Record four pairs at once rather than layering one take four times, because the small disagreements between players are the entire texture.
• Do not smooth them outLeave the qraqeb loud and uncompressed. They clip and they are meant to; a tamed rattle turns the lane into a shaker and the record loses its top half.
• HandclapsA room of people, not a sample. Record several takes of the same two strokes and stack them without aligning them, so the clap gets a width no machine will give you.
• The half this cannot writeMost of a lila is in six, and a sixteenth grid cannot hold it. If you want that half, write in 6/8 or 12/8 and accept that the export from this page is no help to you there.
• StraightSwing 0.5. The duple sections sit flat against a continuous stream of iron, and a swung sixteenth pushes the qraqeb into an audible stumble.

Reference points

Maalem Mahmoud Guinia, Maalem Hamid El Kasri, Maalem Abdellah El Gourd, Nass El Ghiwane, the Essaouira Gnaoua festival, and Randy Weston and Pharoah Sanders on the jazz side of the exchange. Named as reference points for the sound, not as endorsements or as anyone to imitate.