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PASS Pop-up NYC plays out with Innov Gnawa, a traditional Moroccan gnawa band based in New York City who unite music fans with their innovative, hypnotic and ecstatic take on North Africa’s trance-inducing folk tradition.
This is Hashim Aidi on gnawa: ”Their music is believed to heal people possessed by jinn, or spirits. The rise of this music, which began, in the nineteen-fifties, as a marginalized Sufi practice but has become arguably the most popular music emerging from the region today, is a question that nettles scholars and ordinary North Africans alike: How did Gnawa music become our national music? Of the myriad Sufi orders that use faith healing, and of the countless North African genres known for polyrhythmic syncopation, why has this one grabbed Western listeners?”