Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Since the end of the 19th century, the search to identify the origin of the Gnawa community and its ritual practices relied on a loose phonetic premise found in research devoted to the cult of North African saints and the slave trade in Islamic regions. Maurice Delafosse (1870-1926) had speculated that the Berber expression akal-n-iguinaouen (“land of the Blacks”) could have given rise to the words “Guinea” and “Gnawa” by phonetic similarity and that “Gnawa” could therefore mean a “black” person, or someone “from the land of the Blacks”. In the absence of conclusive historical data, this phonetic relationship gave rise to the hypothetical Sub-Saharan origin of the Gnawa and their rituals. Contemporary researchers now admit that identifying the origin of this people from a word is unreasonable today, especially since the Gnawa of Morocco are not all black, Arab or Muslim. They also co-exist in Berber and Jewish communities. According to new evidence, the Gnawa have been Moroccan for generations and are not all descendants of slaves. The Gnawa of Morocco have a very rich ritual and symbolic tradition which is performed notably in lila. This album is devoted to the third phase of these ritual nights –the Mlouk (“the possessors”)– and offers a sample of an ecstatic moment of the lila when, moving through the seven colours, the maâlem and the community around him occupy the sanctified space.

Classical Music

Classical Music

In the female universe of the batuque and finaçon, Ntoni Denti d’Oro is an exception, his ensemble (drums, guitars and cimboa fiddle) reflecting the conservation of an original tradition of which he is the sole exponent: linked to entertainment such as births, christenings and weddings, the lively rhythms of the batuque shift to the words of wisdom and poetic improvisation of the finaçon. Ntoni’s current group was formed at the beginning of the 1980s. At the time of Portuguese colonization the bataque was almost clandestine activity. Those in power saw it only as a crude, unwelcome performance betraying the peoples’ African roots. In 1866, the batuque was banned in the name of morality and maintenance of public order. The batuque tradition was therefore handed down discreetly and did not gain recognition until Cape Verde became independent in 1975. Ntoni Denti d’Oro came out into the open, grabbing the large drum which has now become his hallmark, and started to conduct his group. According to him, this drum is meant to imprint the rhythm onto women who have been weakened by decades of climatic and political hardships.

The main instruments in Baluchi music are recorded on this album -the most prominent (the sorud fiddle), the oldest (the doneli double flute), and the most recent and brilliant (the benju zither)- that presents the art of a freedom-loving nomadic people, living from hand to mouth and always on the move. The Baluchi are a people of about five million individuals, scattered mainly across Pakistan (of which they occupy nearly half), the South-East of Iran, Afghanistan and the Emirates of the Persian Gulf, where they form a large immigrant community. Because of their origins and language, they belong to the Iranian world; they seem to have occupied first the centre of Iran (Kerm�n), or perhaps even the north, before migrating towards the southeast. It was only in the 18th century that a Baluchi national identity arose. It won over and brought together various tribes, essentially on the condition that they would speak the same language. Probably around that time, epic poetry was developed between them, thus unifying all the groups and sub-groups, whatever nuances there might be, into an entity which we now call the Baluchi people.