Ouled Ghnou & Lâriche
7 tracks, 44 minutes
Download from Awesome Tapes from Africa
It’s an album courtesy of that beautiful blog again, and this time it’s from the very north of the continent, from Morocco.
To be honest, I know incredibly little about this album or its artists, and the little bit that I do know comes from the comment section from when the tape was originally posted on AFTA. And even those comments are contradictory! The most accurate-seeming explanation comes from user K7al L3afta, who explains that the artists are a duo called El Hanaouate, who perform a style of halqa. Halqa – meaning ‘circle’ and named for the crowd of onlookers that inevitably form around a performance – is a type of improvised long-form storytelling based on the life of Sufi saints and marabouts; there are many styles of halqa and the stories can be told in many ways.
El Hanaouate are, for all intents and purposes, a comedy duo. Their performance of halqa is half-musical and half-spoken, setting the scene and the main plot points with song, and then getting to the finer points in dialogue. So this one is an interesting listen for someone like me, who can’t speak Arabic. I can (and very much do) enjoy the music – it’s a simple but effective pairing of the wtar lute, which sounds kinda like a half-and-half between an oud and a banjo, and the bendir, a frame drum with a gut snare that makes a gnarly, throaty rattle when struck, over which the duo sing bluesy, ornamented melodies – but then there are sometimes lengthy spoken sections that, of course, leave me very much out of the loop.
This is comedy! The words are all important and I’m understanding none of it. I reckon I’m only capable of appreciating about a third of the art this album has to offer…but that music third that I do get is really good, so imagine what the rest is like. If you know Arabic, I’d love to hear your thoughts on this album – who knows, maybe I’m best off not knowing what they’re saying! But for now, I’ll appreciate the Moroccan groove and revel in the mysteries of the storytelling of El Hanaouate.
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