Archive for category Tour Diary

I was in Morocco recently and one of the highlights of Marrakech was getting to hear real Moroccan folk music called Gnauao (or Gnawa) (pronounced ga-naw-aaa) up close.

Gnawa is a mix of sub-Saharan African, Berber, and Sufi Muslim songs, used in prayer and in celebration of life. If you’ve heard it,  you’ll already know the unique ‘in between the cracks’ feel of the rhythms in the music.

Hearing Gnawa musicians play live is a treat and I got a chance to speak to a couple of musicians who were busking in the Kasbah town and then have a short jam with them on the tradtional Gnaoua castanets. I later bought a pair at a music shop one of the back streets of the Medina market and have been trying to play them using the ‘in between feel’ since I got home.

The castanets (large and heavy made of iron) normally play one of two common rhythms and a three -string lute known commonly as a hajhuj (or gimbri) lays out the harmonic part.  This has a drone on the root and 5th and then melodies played in their own scales over the top.

Jamming with some Gnauoa Musicians

I’ve got a quick recording of the jam I had with the musicians I met in the Kasbah on my iPhone below….





You can hear me struggling to keep up with the castanet master in the blue robe.  The reason the rhythm feels so hard and tricky to latch on to, is that it’s in between two obvious metric beats that we would divide pretty easily in western music.

I went to a cafe for a Tagine to recover from the mind melting rhythms and came up with the transcription below which was my attempt at finding a way to play the foreign feel in a subdivided way – but ultimately, this is a poor man’s version.  They feel the vibe of the half swing/ half straight in their own unique way, and surely the only way to pick it up would be to spend time in Morocco and hours immersed in a Gnauoa groove with the real musicians learning from the source.

Fig 1 and 2 are not Gnaoua rhythms they are just the two simplest western rhythms which the castanet parts fall between. Fig 3 shows one way of dividing the pulse to approximate the way the locals feel the groove. But it’s at best a cheap copy!

Transferring to The Bass

The video above, includes a quick demo of using different techniques along with a metronome set to 3:2:2 to try and emulate the pulse of gnaoua at different tempos. Here I just used C major pentatonic scale as the basis for the examples. The piece at the start is a tune I recorded with the castanets I bought at Bob’s Music in Marrakech and my Bass when I got home – along with some more photos from the trip.

Some pics and vids from the recent BBC Radio 1 session I did with the Crystal Fighters for DJ Rob da Bank’s Festive Festival Hangover Party.

Here’s a link to the full programme (Crystal Fighters Set starts at about 1 hr 34 min in…)

Check out the Crystal Fighters here:

www.crystalfighters.com

Some pics from the Abu Dhabi leg of the ‘Thriller Live’ Michael Jackson Musical Tour:

Bass Jam:

We spent one of our free days at the Ferrari World theme park on Yas Island, home to the world’s fastest roller coaster. Here’s a bass jam I came up with, to go with the video I took of the group that went before us. ;)