Rise Up Moroccan Style
Dear friends,
Tomorrow night we begin a seven-week journey that will attempt to lead us from doubt to acceptance, from possibility to actuality, from the Red Sea to Mount Sinai. We begin our Kumah Festival learning from the former black slaves of Morocco how to transform their Boulila, their chains, into Hamdulillah, praise, through music.
Gnawa, the musical form we will enjoy a concert of, is a mystical Moroccan Muslim tradition, with roots in the pre-Islamic faiths of the Sub-Sahara, where the black slaves were taken from beginning in the 11th century. Like the slaves in our country, their song was their refuge and their offering, rising to the heavens like smoke from an altar. When our ancestors emerged onto the other side of the Sea of Reeds they broke into song:
My song to Yah is my strength
In it I am redeemed.
They must have been singing their way through 400 years of slavery before that as well. Otherwise, how could they have known that in music a person can find redemption, regardless of their circumstances? Singing can do that in part because it demands honesty. Like the Blues, Gnawa music expresses sadness, difficulty, rage. It brings us in touch with reality as it is. It’s through that straight look at who and what we are that the beauty and the gratitude can emerge.
