GANIA MOKTAR & GNAWA SOUL | Album Gnawa Soul

Disques Nuits d’Afrique is pleased to present Gnawa Soul, Moktar Gania’s new album to be released on all digital platforms worldwide on May 20, 2022.

Moktar Gania & Gnawa Soul appear as the new ambassadors of a music linking the Maghreb and West Africa celebrating the marriage of body and spirit that delivers the soul, whether through ballads dedicated to the cosmic elemental or rhythmic tracks from the spiritual trance.

MOKTAR GANIA, WORTHLY HEIR OF THE HERITAGE OG THE GNAWAS

As a worthy heir of the Gania dynasty which has counted so much in the culture of Morocco, Maâlem Moktar Gania of Essaouira is today an essential actor of the Gnaoua music.

The meeting between Maâlem Moktar Gania (younger brother of the unavoidable and late master Mahmoud Gania) and the group Gnawa Soul has created in Essaouira an innovative style at the border of the Gnawa spirit, the great oriental melodies of the Maghreb and the vibrations of the West African culture.

For musicologists and many African-American musicians of Jazz, Blues, or World, the culture of the Gnawas, their rituals, their rhythms, their incantations are considered as a “living source of African music”. While UNESCO recognizes and inscribes the Gnawa art to the intangible heritage of humanity, the album “Gnawa Soul” glorifies this music which connects the Maghreb to West Africa and offers to the world this new unique fusion of the spiritual and the temporal.

AN ALBUM BORN IN ESSAOUÏRA – MOROCCO, SOURCE OF GNAWA CULTURES

At the Planet Essaouira recording studio, the first studio in Essaouira created under the impulse of Pascal Amel (co-founder of the Gnawa Festival in 1994), the meeting between the master of the guembri and singer Moktar Gania, the composer and guitarist Anoir Ben Brahim, and the percussionist – arranger Yacine Ben Ali, allowed the creation of an innovative music that combines the African groove of the Gnawas with the orientalizing melodies of the Maghreb and of the world music. 

The Gnawa master surrounded himself with different musicians to give a universal touch to his album while remaining faithful to the Gnawa heritage. The saxophonist Géraldine Laurent, the guitarist Jean-Marie Ecay, and the Israeli singer of Moroccan origin Neta El Kayam, joined the adventure.

The album was mixed in the United States by Chris Shaw (4 Grammys), mastered at Metropolis studio in London by Tony Cousins. The Moroccan artist Hassan Hajjaj took the cover photo.

TRACKLIST

1. Koyou Koyou

2. Rabi Lâafou

3. Soudani foulani

4. Al ‘Walidine

5. Lâada

6. Mossoyou

7. Ana el Gnaoui

8. Sala Nabina

9. Moulana Jouladina

10. Alla a Soudane

11. Lala Mulati – mix 31.8.19

12. Sassadi Manayou

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES

Initiated by the pillars of the Gnaouie tradition that were his father Boubker and his brother Mahmoud, the young Moktar has performed all over the world with the Gania family, but also by sharing the stage with Randy Weston, Bill Laswell, Pharoah Sanders, Carlos Santana and many others…

The album to be released “Gnawa Soul” was born following the meeting of Moktar with the musicians Anoir El Khabouche and Yacine Ben Ali. It was mixed in the United States and mastered in London. The cover was made by the Pop Art photographer Hassan Hajjaj.