Nass El Ghiwane

Conversation FOLK THE KASBAH A conversation with Omar Sayyed, leader of Nass el Ghiwane Elias Muhanna In the back room of a dusky Casablanca “Illi.” He pronounces the word with café, three men are trying to teach me a exquisite slowness, flicking his tongue lesson. Our dialogue is muffled by the against the second syllable, pressing it sounds of the city on a freezing Febru- into relief. ary afternoon:rain, traffic, and the steady I hesitate for a moment, going boom of ten-foot swells pounding the through the motions. “Il-li?” rock pools below the nearby pier. Inside The doctor’s eyes are glowing as he the café, surly regulars bark at each other leans back and casts a triumphant look at over all manner of beverages:pastis and his comrades. cognac; green-tinted bottles of Cigale, “So what?” I ask abruptly. the local beer; syrupy mint tea, the The table erupts with flailing gestures “Berber whisky.” and rapid-fire cursing in Arabic. The The three men surround me, their doctor stands and shoves his drink aside voices garbled and slurry with drink. in disgust. Omar lumbers out of his The leader—a soft-spoken giant named chair, aping his friend’s pronunciation Omar Sayyed—reaches out to clamp a lesson. The third man at the table, a huge hand over my mouth. toothless old sailor, swipes the doctor’s “Shut up and listen. I will explain it discarded glass and empties it in a single one last time,” he says quietly. swallow. I laugh aloud and roll up my “Listen to me!” shrieks a young ge- sleeves. neticist, elbowing the big man aside. Omar finally regains the floor.“Don’t “Listen, and repeat after me.” The wiry be ashamed,” he offers. “The difference doctor clears his throat, straightens his is very subtle. Listen again.” collar, and licks his lips. He pauses and surveys the drunken “Illa,” he says. crowd menacingly,daring anyone to dis- Omar Sayyed “Illa,” I dutifully repeat. rupt his performance. 50 TRANSITION ISSUE 93 FOLK THE KASBAH 51 “Ma hmouni gheir ar-rijal illa da’ou.” inscrutable. But we are in Morocco, and The words, nearly whispered, fill the si- everyone knows exactly what we are lence. Around the café, patrons are lis- talking about.The waiters and assembled tening in, grinning. café dwellers share a chuckle at my ex- “Which means,” he says,“I worry for pense, while cabbies and grocers and ac- men when they disappear,when they are countants come over to greet my lost to us.” teacher, Omar Sayyed. He knows almost He waits for my cue, and says:“As op- none of them,but they all know him.He posed to:Ma hmouni gheir ar-rijal ...il- is a singer, a celebrity, perhaps the most li . da’ou,” lingering before and after famous voice in Morocco. He is fifty-six the penultimate word, and suddenly I years old.And he has just explained some hear it. song lyrics to me with the help of a ge- “Which means,” I blurt, flushed with netic engineer and a drunken sailor. discovery, “I worry for those men who <PQ1> disappeared. Right?” I am desperate to • • • qualify:“Those men, the ones that you knew? The ones you can name, who dis- Moroccans are intensely proud of Nass appeared, who were imprisoned— el Ghiwane,the group Omar Sayyed and right?” four friends founded thirty-odd years Drinks are ordered; a busboy cheers. ago in Casablanca. People like to call Omar eyes me appraisingly as his them the Beatles of Morocco—and also friends cackle and thump my back. My the Rolling Stones of Morocco, the Bob translation lesson is complete.In a differ- Dylans,and even the Grateful Dead.The ent country,even a different Arab coun- profusion of titles is confusing but apt:in try, this conversation would have been the 1970s, the members of Nass el Ghi- Left to right: ‘Allal Yalla, Omar Sayyed, La’arbi Batma, Abdelaziz al-Tahiri, Boujmii’ 52 TRANSITION ISSUE 94 wane (pronounced “ghee-WAN”) were indeed Western-style stars. They played before thousands of fans at packed are- nas, in country and abroad, and released dozens of recordings.Their songs played on every radio station, their logos em- blazoned on T-shirts, bumper stickers, and window decals.They grew their hair long, smoked dope, and wore white leather vests with mohair bell-bottoms. To most Moroccans,they looked like the revolution. As it happens, Nass el Ghiwane don’t sound anything like the Beatles. Their music doesn’t rock—it jangles, rumbles, and spins. It has a coarse, vaguely rural quality.When I first heard them, the im- age that came to mind was that of a crowded barnyard:a scene of squawking hens, lowing beasts of burden, a bony sheepdog trailing a passel of tin. The melodies are simple and soulful; the voices soar and dip in unison chants. But it is in the rhythm that you hear their in- credible dexterity.When the drums join in after a banjo solo, the effect can be transformative, like a natural runner hit- ting his stride. The beat sways and shifts pendent women of sometimes ill re- Clockwise from against the melody, drawing near and pute—but also melhoun,a medieval Mo- top: Omar Sayyed, pulling away again, as though the tune roccan oral tradition with roots in the La’arbi Batma, Boujmii’, Abdelaziz were trapped inside a whirling,weighted courtly arts of Moorish Spain. The al-Tahiri. Center: centrifuge. group’s hypnotic rhythms borrowed Mahmoud al-Sa’di Nass el Ghiwane debuted in 1971, from the mystagogic cadences of the Sufi when Omar Sayyed was twenty-four brotherhoods, especially the Gnawa— years old. All five members sang, often descendents of West African slaves, in chorus, and the group played a mot- whose ritual exorcisms entailed what ley assortment of traditional instruments might be the original trance music. The in untraditional combinations:the sentir, banjo—a grittier African alternative to a gut-stringed bass lute; banjo; kettle- the Arab zither—reinforced the sense drums, frame drums, tambourines, and that this music, which was unlike any- cymbals. The plaintive melodies and thing ever heard in Morocco, was in its chants brought to mind ‘aita, a popular own reckless way a summation of every- style associated with the shikhat—inde- thing ever heard in Morocco. It was a FOLK THE KASBAH 53 Gnawa musicians self-consciously nationalist sound, new- steaming cups,a pot of tea,and the sprigs fangled and old-fashioned at the same of mint,and wormwood,and ambergris, time. that are used as infusions. In the open- Out of this ferment, the members of ing verse, the narrator asks the tray: Nass el Ghiwane emerged as custodians “Where are those people of good inten- of Morocco’s cultural heritage, curators tion once gathered around you? Where of its traveling show. Their songs were are those blessed and principled people, full of references to old poems,proverbs, those who once accompanied you?” medieval saints,and mystics.The fact that Evocative, poetical, and vague, the song they sang in colloquial Moroccan rather practically begs to be interpreted.Who than Egyptian Arabic affirmed this tip- were those “principled people,” anyway, of-the-tongue familiarity: and where did they go? Morocco was an erratically authoritarian country in the It’s hard to be at peace, but the love of drink 1970s, a decade marked by coup at- is easy, tempts and assassinations, political kid- Desire never forgets you nappings and censorship. Thousands of It’s hard to be calm, but the passions of “dissidents”—students,intellectuals,reli- people are easy . gious fundamentalists, leftists—were So difficult when the desire arises, when the peremptorily jailed, silenced, or worse. ambergris is put before me, Although the band steadfastly refused to And the mint and wormwood . explain itself, it isn’t difficult to understand why young,urban Moroccan audi- This, from Nass el Ghiwane’s most fa- ences were thrilled and scandalized by mous song,is stirring social commentary Nass el Ghiwane’s preoccupation with disguised as a conversation between a lost time, disintegrating landscapes, and man and his tea tray (“Essiniya” [The tea missing people. tray]). <PQ2> The words invoke family At the group’s inaugural concert in or friends, gathered around a platter of Casablanca, thunderous applause sum- 54 TRANSITION ISSUE 94 moned them back on stage for an en- Temptation of Christ. Boujmii’s soaring core. After the headlining act was can- voice was a crucial part of Nass el Ghi- celed by popular demand, Nass el Ghi- wane’s sound, soaring above the group’s wane played an impromptu second set, unison chants.“My voice was high,” re- and a star was born. As Tayyeb Seddiki, calls Omar Sayyed. “It rose to the ear. Morocco’s leading playwright,observed, But Boujmii’s was higher:it cut straight “In the 1960’s, Moroccans were sick of to the heart.” the Egyptian song. Totally fed up. The Still, Nass el Ghiwane has gone on to musicians were old men in burnooses release countless records. As best I can droning on about their lost loves.Young tell,I mean that literally—Omar Sayyed, people weren’t so attracted to that— for one, has no idea how many official shall we say—’classical’ aesthetic. Then releases the group was party to,and that’s along came a group of young guys with not even counting the bootlegs, which long hair,singing short songs,in a dialect you can buy on nearly any street corner that we could understand,with a few po- in Marrakech.Some of their most recent litical denunciations, and .

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