Kunsthistorica Cynthia Becker verkent de intrigerende visuele en muzikale identiteit van de Gnawa, de Marokkaanse spirituele traditie die Afrikaanse, Berber- en Islamitische invloeden samenbrengt.
Opgelet: deze lezing wordt gegeven in het Engels.
In contemporary Morocco, Gnawa music is associated with the world music scene. But it is also a descriptor for the descendants of enslaved Sahelian Africans in Morocco and the spirit possession and healing ceremonies they perform. Since the nineteenth century, a secular performance practice in public spaces has existed in parallel with sacred rituals in the private sphere.
Through the study of music and visual culture, this lecture demonstrates how Gnawa emerged as a performative practice associated with Blackness and enslavement in the late nineteenth-century. When Morocco became a French Protectorate in 1912, slave markets had been closed. One avenue of economic survival for freed slaves was the performance of music on the streets in exchange for money. An examination of Gnawa self-representations in early photography, musical instruments, and both secular and sacred performances, reveals a great deal about the agency of those who operated in a web of asymmetrical power relations and constructed their own self-image.
