Boulila Moroccan Samba with Bolabola Montréal

Gnawa. Ritual, music, dance. This artistic form of expression, inscribed on UNESCO’s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, stems from a distant and mystical cultural memory rooted in sub-Saharan Africa. Boulila’s music is strongly grounded in tradition, carried by the low vibrations of the guembri’s strings and the clinking of the krakebs, and is amplified by intoxicating repetition and the ferment of a liberating trance. Winners of the 2021 Syli d’or de la musique du monde, the group revisits the conventions of this festive and therapeutic musical genre with instrumentation that combines guitar, saxophone, bass, piano and drums, exposing the African roots of popular Western music.

The versatility of Moroccan rhythms will be the focus of these three star-studded evenings, as Boulila jams with three emissaries from the Montreal scene.

Moroccan Samba evening | with Bolabola Montréal: Just like they would in the villages, drums and ululations reverberate when the members of Bolabola Montréal take to the stage with their Issawa and Dakka rhythms, typical of Sufi rites, in an authentic frenzy found nowhere else except in Marrakech.