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'If something is boring for one minute try it for two, and if it is still boring, try it for four minutes; eventually one discovers it is interesting' - Zen saying.
Find out whether the Zen masters are right this holiday weekend when my Future Radio programme scores another first with the broadcast premiere of a complete African trance ritual recorded in the Medina of Marrakech, Morocco. The performance is by traditional gnawa musicians (photo above) and has been made possible by a collaboration between the Norwich community station Future Radio 96.9FM and KamarStudios who are based in Marrakech and New York.
Marrakech is known as the Gate of Black Africa and gnawa music came to Morocco from sub-Saharan Africa with the slave trade. For centuries gnawa has only been played in secret spirit-possession and healing ceremonies called lilas that evolved from ancient African animistic and Islamic Sufi rituals. In these religious rites healing spirits are said “to mount” the possessed, who whirl and writhe in an ecstatic trance.
Recordings of the gnawa trance rituals are very rare as they are performed in private. But KamarStudios have worked with leading gnawa musicians to record the complete ‘black’ section of the twelve hour long Nights of the Seven Colours trance ritual which celebrates the creation of the universe. The ‘black’ ritual lasts for two hours and in a broadcast first will be aired on Future Radio without interruption. The performance is led by gnawa master musician Abbes Baska Larfaoui supported by eighteen musicians and dancers.
Gnawa music, which combines vocals with repetitive and intricate cross rhythms on percussion has many connections with contemporary music and now has its own festival at Essaouira on the Moroccan coast which attracts an international audience, while Steve Reich and many other contemporary composers have been influenced by African drum rhythms.
To reflect these contemporary connections the broadcast of the sacred lilas is being paired with a one hour set which combines the traditional gnawa musicians with two young Marrakech DJs whose influences range from Philip Glass to Bill Laswell. This one hour electro-acoustic ‘minimalist trance’ set concludes the webcast which starts on Future Radio at 12.01am UK time early on Monday morning May 26 which is Sunday afternoon or evening in North America, find precise local time here.
Remember also my interview with Jordi Savall which is being broadcast at 5.00pm UK time this Sunday May 25. As the gnawa trance broadcast takes the usual Overgrown Path repeat slot early on Monday morning the Jordi Savall interview is getting a special repeat at 12.01am on Wednesday May 28, which is Tuesday afternoon or evening in North America.
Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk
Alice Coltrane, the jazz performer and composer who was inextricably linked with the music of her late husband, legendary saxophonist John Coltrane, has died in Los Angeles. She was 69. Here, in tribute, is an article I ran in August last year.
It's a Sunday afternoon in the Fillmore section of San Francisco, and at the Church of St John Coltrane the service is in full swing. The church's founder, His Eminence Archbishop Franzo King, a tall, stick-thin 60-year-old dressed in a white cassock with a green scarf and a fuchsia pink skullcap, is dancing in front of an 8ft-high Byzantine-style icon that depicts John Coltrane holding a saxophone with flames emerging from it, a gold halo around his head.
The archbishop's son, Rev Franzo King Jr, on tenor saxophone, is playing a version of Lonnie's Lament, from Coltrane's album Crescent, that eventually merges into Spiritual. A choir led by Archbishop King's wife Marina is singing the Lord's Prayer over the music, while a four-piece band (with his daughter Wanika on bass) accompanies them. Thirty or so congregants are crowded into the tiny room, the air thick with the smell of incense. Some are dancing and clapping and saying Hallelujah! while others are sitting with eyes closed in silent meditation. In a corner, the 11-year-old Franzo King III blows on his own horn.
The centrepiece of the "Coltrane liturgy" is his 1964 album, A Love Supreme, what the church calls his "testimony". As the band goes into Acknowledgement, the first part of A Love Supreme, the choir sings the words to Psalm 23. When they reach the part where, on the album, Coltrane chants the words "A Love Supreme" over and over like a mantra, Archbishop King walks among the congregation with a microphone. "Let's have some love!" he yells. "Don't just take it! Give!"
From Ministry of sound in the Guardian. And now hear A Love Supreme Part 1 complete (7' 43") and watch the video online.
John Coltrane saw his album-length suite A Love Supreme as his gift to God. The album was recorded by John Coltrane's quartet on December 9, 1964 at the Van Gelder studio in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey. The album is a four-part suite, broken up into tracks called "Acknowledgement" (which contains the famous mantra that gave the suite its name), 
"Resolution," "Pursuance," and "Psalm." It is intended to be a spiritual album, broadly representative of a personal struggle for purity. The final track, "Psalm," uniquely corresponds to the wording of a devotional poem Coltrane included in the liner notes. A Love Supreme is usually listed among the greatest jazz albums of all time. It was ranked eighty-second in a 2005 survey held by British television's Channel 4 to determine the 100 greatest albums of all time. The elements of harmonic freedom heard on this album indicated the changes to come in Coltrane's music.* For more on the African Orthodox Church of St John Coltrane, 351 Divisadero St. San Francisco, CA follow this link.
Image credit Fly.co.uk. Notes on A Love Supreme based on Wikipedia. Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk
If you enjoyed this post take An Overgrown Path to Love of the blues
