Surmounting both cultural and gender taboos and patriarchy, Asmaa Hamzaoui has pole-vaulted herself onto the Gnawa music stage. The BBC interviewed this Moroccan rising star about her artistic journey through a spiritual musical tradition dominated by men.
Gnawa music is a genre of Moroccan spiritual music performed by descendants of enslaved people from Sub-Saharan Africa. It blends ceremonial poetry with traditional music and dance, featuring a Gnawa maâlem, or master musician, playing a guitar-like percussion instrument, called the Ghembri.
Hamzaoui inherited this art from her father, Gnawa master musician Rachid al-Hamzaoui, who taught this art to his one and only daughter, who now performs professionally.
One of the very few women in this genre, Asmâa has become a Gnawa celebrity since her debut on stage at the annual Gnawa Festival in 2012. Gnawa represents a long-marginalized tradition of street musicians and beggars that is gaining popularity in Morocco and throughout the world, according to BBC.
In an interview, Hamzaoui who headlined this year’s festival told the BBC “It was a huge responsibility. First, because of the instrument — it was my father’s. I needed to play the same good songs he had taught me. I needed to play them correctly.”
Although the number of Gnawa people in Morocco is unknown, their history can be traced back to the slave trade in the 16th century.
While the rising prominence of women appears to be widely welcomed, their main concern is that the growing popularity of Gnawa music and culture is leading many young artists to seek fortune and notoriety on the festival circuit, away from the spiritual asceticism at the heart of the community’s ethos.
“Having women performers could be a good thing,” said Naji Sudani, a maâlem, master musician. “But the main issue for the youth in general is humility — modesty, understanding the culture of transmission from the elders and respecting it.”
However, the economic realities of contemporary Morocco mean that some, including Hamzaoui, want the music to release them from financial misery as well as spiritually lift them. “There’s just me and my sister that support a home for our parents,” Hamzaoui said. “We pay their bills, and we have to pay ours. I have a son and a lot of things to pay for.”
In 2019, UNESCO designated Gnawa culture and music as the “Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.” According to UNESCO, “Gnawa is first and foremost a Sufi brotherhood music combined with lyrics with a generally religious content, invoking ancestors and spirits.” But UNESCO goes deeper, describing the Gnawa practice more profoundly as “a therapeutic possession ritual through all-night rhythm and trance ceremonies combining ancestral African practices, Arab-Muslim influences and native Berber cultural performances.”