I came from a family with multiple deep Gnawa heritage and i can tell you this : You nailed it ! You are in the good way , yes you told that you still a student but trust me you are in the good way Very constructive knowledge for the world ! Hope see you again in Essaouira Gnawa festival in the future 👏👏👏🇲🇦🇲🇦🇲🇦🎸🎸
We all remain being students throughout our entire lives. Today I learned a lot again. Thank you for the opportunity and for this wonderful interview, Julia
Oh yes the Moroccan guimbri, the official gnawa instrument 👍🏻 If you listen carefully to some jimi Hendrix tunes, you can sort of hear the influence this genre of music gave him when he first visited "El sawira city" in morocco
Absolutely love this. Michael is a great guy and is really passionate about this instrument and the history behind it. Please make more videos like this where you show "exotic" traditional instruments.
Gnawa are medicine. And so as bass haha a very spiritual instrument indeed, largely found in my region in North Africa, and that’s true it’s played in pentatonic scales since it’s been discovered man the world is very small this music has been carried to the United States on boats with those people singing to wash away the pain and using shackles as qraqeb « the cuivre instrument with high frequency » if you listen to blues you will find a lot of gnawa in it. Sending you all the love vibes from morocco 🇲🇦 may your life be full of love and bass and melodies. ❤️🙏🏽 Ps : we headbang to this music as well, little moshpit in the living room. 😂
Thanks Micheal for introducing the Guembri and Gnawa music to the audience,will be great to meet you one day ,I am Guembri player based in the Uk.much love ❤️ good luck ,Saha🙏🏽
Damn, there is a Zawinul Syndicate song I have always loved called 'Louange' off the Vienna Nights live album but I could never place the instrument that plays the melody. After watching this video I feel like it's got to be a gimbri. So cool.
Great discussion and very interesting information. I'm looking forward to a Michael League book: Gnawa Gimbri lines for the Electric Bass - with backing tracks to play with!
What a great interview Julia did with Michael. I like him so much for having moved to Spain and diving into (north) African music too. I really like the music of Bokanté too.
Julia is not only a amazingly talented bassist but she also can play bass while riding a unicycle . No joke! There's video on RU-vid. Julia I just love ya like crazy. Austrian amazing! Bass is beautiful.
I’ m proud as an Algerian to see the influence of this instrument on an other genras historically, especially played by one of my favourite bass players, in a show hosted by Julia 🤩
@@khalildjemouai6871 😂😂😂 UNESCO Lists Moroccan Gnawa as Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity gnawa is moroccan only calm down hhhh correct your informations
When Michael played "Hamuda" (hope I spelled it right) it sounded a lot like some Cuban bassists. Once I saw Cachao live and what he was playing was pretty similar. If you don't know who Cachao was you MUST listen to him!
The gimbri is also a descendant of the ngoni, a relative of the akontir, the ancestor of the banjo. In fact, many gimbri to this day have the short treble drone string on top. Also, the concept of a high percussive drone is also found in the irish bouzouki, which was developed from the greek bouzouki by a musical culture that had access to banjos (through american influence), although in that case it's a non-reentrant tuning and the strings are all the same length and all fingered. As for being the ancestor of the electric bass, that may be true in role (and even then not really, the gimbri is closer to a 3oud in function within its music) but there clearly isn't any direct line, since the electric bass is a mix of upright bowed bass and guitar, and the upright bowed bass is itself a mix of violin and viola da gamba families (fretless and high tension like the violin, by fourths and with low shoulders like the viola da gambe)
I actually have one, bought in Morocco, supposedly from the same shop Robert Plant bought some instruments, but who knows if that's true - cool instrument though, not that I really know how to play it.
What I knew prior to this video hosted by Julia (and her expert skills as an interviewer) with Michael as a most engaging guest: I was vaguely aware of a stringed, melodic bass instrument used in certain North African folk music. I was told it was called a Sintir, a member of the Lute family. That was the extent of my knowledge. What I learned: Apparently the Gimbri is another name for the Sintir and it’s used in traditional Gnawa music, a genre I’d never heard of before. It’s made of wood, camel hide and genuine animal gut strings along with some functional metal furniture. It performs three, separate and distinct roles simultaneously in the hands of a skilled player. It’s played both with a grooving accompaniment and in unison with the sole vocalist (depending on the part of the song performed at the moment); it’s accompanied by only one other instrument, a metallic castanet-like instrument (that I did know about), that I know as the Garageb. I didn’t know how or where the Garageb was utilized until now. There’s more I learned but these are the highlights. Thank you Julia and Micheal. One question, with some background context: It’s a fretless instrument, so it’s not necessarily predetermined as to the intervallic sensibilities of the playable notes. Most of what I heard Michael playing seemed fairly Western, with the 12 note diatonic base and a 7-note, major scale set of intervals. I did pick up on the microtonal aspects and would have not known this was deliberate unless Michael had indicated as such. Was Micheal deliberately playing with a familiar set of Western sounding intervals for us or is the traditional Gnawa music intervallic set that close to the Western system, whether it has just naturally developed that way or having been influenced** by European music? **The influence I’m thinking of is when the Moors (from Morocco) and Spaniards/Portuguese, somewhat peacefully, coinhabited the Iberian peninsula up until about five or six centuries ago. Michael’s brother, being an ethnomusicologist, might have the answer to my question.
Julia, this is not the right place to post but I just watched both Earth Wind and Fire videos and you are such a fantastic player. But how do you learn these songs so quickly and how do you remember them?
I think the appropriation discussion in art is a bit over complicated... to me its simple: you experience something, its resonates with you, it inspires you and you will - to some degree - include into your own art. And since you are telling stories anyway, you can just be completely open, where you have it from: Give the credit. Its only really stealing if either it becomes your whole act or if you pretend it was your invention. everything else is just a shared and collaborative forward movement and in same way only art is capable of. oh and btw: what a lovely instrument - I first heard it played by Marcus Miller in Montreux - Bs River :)
didn't you find someone from Gnawa? the guy doesn't represent Gnawa even though he plays, just as a matter of recognition to the music genre, imagine I talk to an american about Spanish music... respect though
Nice job on the origin story. You usually have to beat the correct information out of people about how something changed from Point A to B due to wars, colonization, migration, or integration.
Ok so, if I take this to a luthier, how low can he get the action on one of these beauties? Because I'm forming this Russian funk band and my costume is a voodoo witch Doctor, I'm goinh to be called Dr Zulu Phonk, I've written my the 1st song called " get down power to the brothers of funk the man cant hold me down im funktastic" and I've decided on one of these over a Hofner! Also do they come with pick ups? Can I put a seymour duncan in it and what tunners would you recommend I was thinking some Schallers.
Interesting interview Julia. Michael caught the essence of the guimbri and explains very well. Currently in gnawa land, it inspired me to resample your interview ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-mYt9KqhDZfE.html and make it a 3 part gnawa trance song. First with acoustic samples, then finding the link with samba before getting into the trance. What do you think?
Why don't we use music to help cure sick people in our western cultures? Music has the power to get through to a person's inner self, to their soul. It lifts your mood, it makes you feel better, it's a positive force for good. We all know this instinctively, we feel it at concerts. It is music making us feel good. I have seen the change music can make to a room full of dementia sufferers when tambourines and triangles are handed out. When the music starts it awakens something inside them, they join in. It lifts their mood. It's a real tangible thing. We should use music in hospitals to help relieve stress and anxiety and to promote quicker healing.
