Artists
who's who and who's doing what?Gnawa Sidi Mimoun
- country:Morocco
- style(s):Sufi
- label:ARC
- artist submitted by:
The Gnawa are a spiritual-philosophical brotherhood of descendant of black slaves who had been deported by the Arabs from the countries of the subsaharian West Africa (Mauretania, Senegal, Mali, Niger, Guinea) to Morocco. The devotees are keeping the multiple roots alive: those of the black african cultures, but as well the Judaism, the Christianism and specially the Islam. The traditional ceremonies have been influenced strongly by the Sufism, because the confraternity was given by the ethiopian Sidi Bilal, Friend of the Prophet and first muezzin of the Islam.
Ritual dances and musics form the base of the Gnawa ceremony performed in a complex liturgy (lila, derdeba) that re-create the first sacrifice and the genesis of the universe by the evocation of the seven main manifestations of the divine demiurgic activity, the seven mluk represented by seven colors, as a prismatic decomposition of the original light/energy. This liturgy is part of the "moussem".
During these annual "moussems" - which are pilgrimages to the tombs of saints - processions are taking place during the day and the lilas are practiced during nocturnal ceremonies. On this occasion different groups of Gnawa coming together and the different brotherhoods exchange their experiences and dances as f.e. Aissaoua, Jilala and Hamadsha.
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