Nass El Ghiwane

Nass El Ghiwane came together just over a decade after Morocco’s independence when the members met while working as actors in Morocco’s avant-garde theater scene. Their music, which mixes traditional gnawa, chaabi, and amazigh music with rock sounds, captured those transformative post-independence years when Moroccan society was striving to build an identity and balancing its cultural heritage with modernity. Nass El Ghiwane builts on Morocco’s inherently trancy traditional music styles to weave hypnotic melodies which would go on to have an enormous influence not only on Moroccan music, but also on modern North African sounds like  raï. The band’s story is beautifully told by Ahmend El Maanouni on his documentary Trances, which even turned Martin Scorsese into a Nass El Ghiwane fan. This album, originally recorded in 1974 and reissued by Sudiphone in 2011, exemplifies Nass El Ghiwane’s style, both in terms of music and themes. These were also revolutionary years, and their scathing rallying calls against corruption and injustice made Nass El Ghiwane torchbearers for the working classes and their concerns.