" For Samir LanGus, the body-moving drone of Gnawa music can be a point of departure as much as a spiritual tradition. Gnawa is the musical heritage of Morocco's sub-Saharan African people, many of whom were transported there in bondage hundreds of years ago from points south. Before the blues was carried across the Atlantic, a version of it moved north, by way of Mali, and became Gnawa. (Really, rock 'n' roll sounds as similar to this as to the blues.) LanGus plays the guembri and sings in a relatively traditional mode, maintaining the rugged push of Gnawa music, but above that he stacks sharper sound objects 20th-century-modern piano chords; a trumpet; high, women's voices echoing his own. He says that his songs mirror the mélange that he grew up around in the coastal city of Agadir. "

 

The New York Times / GIOVANNI RUSSONELLO