Gnawa night: what you’re hearing

Gnawa is trance music from the Moroccan south, carried by descendants of enslaved West Africans and shaped over centuries into something entirely its own. The songs are long, the rhythm is relentless, and the point is not to perform for you but to pull you in.

Three sounds

The guembri is the bass lute with a camel-skin face; it holds the melody and the low pulse at once. The qraqeb are iron castanets, played in pairs, and they are what you feel in your chest. The voice leads a call, and the rest of the group answers.

How the night goes

It starts slow, around ten, with the maalem tuning and talking. By eleven the tempo lifts and the roof fills. By midnight nobody is sitting down. Quiet hours still start at midnight for the dorms, so the last set is unplugged and short.

Bring a layer. The Atlantic wind picks up after sunset even in June.