Berklees New Program in Morocco Explores an African Musical Tradition The partnership with the Gnaoua and World Music Festival that helps musicians dig deeper into their artistry and bridge musical cultures.
By
Kimberly Ashton
December 9, 2024
A quarter-century ago, Essaouira was mostly a quiet old port on the coastal edge of Morocco, out of the way for anyone not looking for it. Those who made pilgrimages there were mostly artists and musicians, including the likes of Jimi Hendrix and Carlos Santana, who came to explore a style of music that's said to be a musical wellspring from which the blues and other African-diaspora genres later arose.
Essaouira was a very interesting city but was really marginalized. It was like a hippie city, says Neila Tazi, owner of A3 Communications, a marketing and public relations agency that also organizes cultural events. In 1998, she and a group of friends decided the city would be a perfect spot to start a small festival for aficionados who had an interest in the region's distinctive Gnawa (also written as Gnaoua ) music.
Neila Tazi
Image courtesy of A3 Communications
It wasn't music we would see on stages or on TV, Tazi says. In 1999, A3 changed that by launching a free, open-air festival with one stage, and enjoyed a small success. Then word started to spread.
Within two years, nearly half a million people came to Essaouira to attend what some now call the Moroccan Woodstock, a multistage event featuring dozens of concerts. Over time, the Gnaoua and World Music Festival has turned the city into a year-round musical mecca. In December, 60 Minutes aired a 22-minute spot on the festival and the culture it celebrates.
If you say Montreux, you think jazz. If you say Cannes, you think cinema. And if you say Essaouira, you think Gnawa. It's totally linked now, Tazi, who is now also a senator in Morocco, says. And thanks to her efforts and those of her team, in 2019 Gnawa culture entered UNESCOs Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.
Maria Iturriaga Martinez
Originally practised by groups and individuals from slavery and the slave trade dating back to at least the 16th century, Gnawa culture [combines] ancestral African practices, Arab-Muslim influences and native Berber cultural performances, the UNESCO inscription reads.
It's this cultural and musical richness that also attracted Berklee, which partnered with the festival in June to launch a concurrent six-day educational program designed for professional musicians from around the world.
Berklee had been looking for ways to further engage in Africa, and the festival had been on its radar for several years but the pandemic had put a potential partnership on ice. In 2022, the festival returned after a two-year hiatus, and last year, when Tazi reached out to Berklee, everyone agreed the timing was now right for a partnership.
Jason Camelio
The Gnaoua and World Music Festival was very much aligned with the values and the history that Berklee also represents, even more so with the fact that Berklee acknowledges in its mission [that it is] founded on the culture and music of the African diaspora, says Mar a Mart nez Iturriaga, senior vice president of Berklee Global.
The initiative ties into the work Berklee Global is doing in engaging with critically important musical traditions, says Jason Camelio, assistant vice president of global initiatives. It's arguable that the roots of the blues come from the Gnawa music tradition. If you really dig into the [Gnawa stringed] instrument-the guembri-and the spiritual tradition of the music, you're going to find that there are strong, strong connections, he says.
Origin StoriesLike distant cousins who share traits inherited from a common ancestor, many African-diaspora genres that later developed across the Americas can trace their lineage back to sounds that still reverberate through Gnawa music.
Leo Blanco
Image by Pamela Hersch
We stay with what is made here in this part of the Atlantic, and it's jazz or rap or you name it in Latin America. But there's not much consciousness among people in the Americas of what's going on in Africa and [that] we got a lot of our music from them, says Professor Leo Blanco, one of the five Berklee instructors who came from Boston and Valencia, Spain, to teach in the program. So I think that bridge needs to be re-established again in a different way.
The original connection Blanco is referring to was established by the slave trade as enslaved people were brought from sub-Saharan Africa to places such as Morocco, and beyond. With them came their music. Some say that the krakeb, an iron castanet that's prominent in the rhythmically rich and complex music of the Gnawa, came from the metal used to shackle slaves. Krakebs, along with a three-string bass lute called a guembri (a potential precursor to the banjo), constitute the genre's primary instruments, along with the voice.
Abdel Kander
Image by Nicolas Lemoine
In Morocco, sub-Saharan rhythms blended with Arabic and Sufi styles to produce a genre steeped in spirituality and used in ceremonies that induce trances, but in North America they took different paths and made their way into blues and jazz.
I try to get the Gnawi in John Coltrane, or the Gnawi in Dizzy Gillespie or in Thelonious Monk, says program participant Abdel Kander, a Moroccan bebop guitarist and Gnawa music enthusiast who works in cybersecurity in Paris. Some of the tunes really [lend] themselves quite easily to that sort of a rhythm and groove.
Anas Chlih, a Moroccan who's been playing the festival for 14 years and who attended the Berklee program, agrees: You discover when you start to research Moroccan music that jazz is in here already.
From left: Javier Vercher, Jamey Haddad 73, Ron
Most recent headlines
05/01/2027
Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be ...
04/08/2026
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, t...
04/07/2026
April 7 2026, 19:00 (PDT) Detective Conan: Fallen Angel of the Highway Opens in...
02/06/2026
The TV agency was one of the earliest adopters of Nielsen's local television...
02/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
02/06/2026
Grass Valley today announced that Australian News Channel (ANC), operator of Sky News Australia, has deployed Grass Valley AMPP to transform its newsroom produc...
02/06/2026
Studio Technologies, a leading manufacturer of high-quality audio, video, and fiber-optic solutions, announces its new Model 385 Mic/Intercom Beltpack. The Mode...
02/06/2026
The Riedel Group today announced the appointment of Gudrun Scharler as CEO of Riedel Networks. She succeeds Michael Martens, who has led Riedel Networks since 2...
02/06/2026
More signals, higher quality, and outstanding ingest and streaming flexibility deliver professional results in a small, all-in-one footprint...
02/06/2026
farmerswife will be featured on the Modena Media & Entertainment stand at this year's Mediatech Africa 2026, giving visitors an opportunity to explore the l...
02/06/2026
PTZOptics will showcase a new generation of intelligent video workflows at InfoComm 2026, June 17 19, Las Vegas. Visitors to booth N8227 will see how PTZOptics ...
02/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
02/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
02/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
02/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
02/06/2026
Trust has become a commercial issue With global advertising spend forecast to exceed US$1 trillion this year*, the commercial consequences of weak governance co...
02/06/2026
June sees Ireland's cultural calendar in full bloom, as RT Supporting the Arts showcases a vibrant and wide-ranging programme spanning music, theatre, visu...
02/06/2026
After The Traitors Ireland launched in 2025, Irish audiences proved to have a taste for the global hit reality show. This Bank Holiday Monday fans can indulge e...
01/06/2026
In its sixth year, the broadcaster's coverage has become a global brand and ...
01/06/2026
Designed to solve a common problem in broadcasting, the automated workflow detects, identifies, removes, and documents copyrighted music
AudioShake has introdu...
01/06/2026
The sports-analytics company combines its data with proprietary AI to help leagu...
01/06/2026
Category line-up & sponsors announced
Photo: Paul Clarke
The Production Music Awards (PMA) have announced that submissions are now officially open ahead of...
01/06/2026
New hybrid sample/synthesis instrument revealed
Excite Audio have just released the latest instalment in their Evolve series, which has been developed in co...
01/06/2026
Latest TONEX expansion captures three rare vintage amps
The newest addition to IK Multimedia's ever-growing TONEX line-up introduces a set of three incr...
01/06/2026
Musically intelligent soft synth gets upgraded
Scaler Music will be probably be best known to many for their music theory tools, but their product range al...
01/06/2026
SBS confirms its broadcast sponsors for FIFA World Cup 2026
1 June, 2026
Media releases
SBS has secured Hyundai, Hisense, Macca's, Rexona, bet365, Com...
01/06/2026
Rohde & Schwarz Satellite Industry Days 2026 guided by the motto From Earth to ...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Marshall Electronics is showcasing a comprehensive lineup of next-generation POV cameras, purpose-built to power today's connected AV environments, at InfoC...
01/06/2026
Adobe Announces Concept to Vector
Deepa Subramaniam June 1, 2026
0 Comments
One of the biggest frustrations we hear from designers is how difficult it...
01/06/2026
Vampire Feature Night Patrol Graded with DaVinci Resolve Studio
Brie Clayton June 1, 2026
0 Comments
Colorist shapes dark, gritty tone for horror thri...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Luxembourg, June 1, 2026 - SES, a leading space solutions company, and Viva, Mexico's ultra low-cost airline, launched fast and reliable multi-orbit satelli...
01/06/2026
Agentic AI is getting physical.
At COMPUTEX on Tuesday, NVIDIA announced NVIDIA JetPack 7.2 and NVIDIA NemoClaw support on NVIDIA Jetson.
JetPack 7.2 brings a...
01/06/2026
Financial institutions have spent years building AI: fraud models, credit models...
01/06/2026
Mardi 2 juin 14h00
FilmLight (ARRI), 10 rue Ren Boulanger, 75010 Paris
Rejoignez-nous pour d couvrir comment FLAPI (l'API FilmLight) peut transformer e...
01/06/2026
January 6 2026, 05:30 (PST) Dolby Sets the New Standard for Premium Entertainment at CES 2026
Throughout the week, Dolby brings to life the latest innovatio...
31/05/2026
Olivia P rez-Collellmir to Premiere Original Work at Gaud Centennial in Barcelona The Berklee graduate and faculty member will debut her choral symphony with...
31/05/2026
Back to All News
Netflix Wins 15 Awards at the Canadian Screen Awards - See Pho...
31/05/2026
Taiwan is home to more than 500 NVIDIA ecosystem partners. More than 1 million N...
31/05/2026
As factories move from isolated automation to plant-wide intelligence, manufacturers need AI systems that can connect live machine signals, quality systems, wor...
31/05/2026
The NVIDIA AI Cloud ecosystem is accelerating the global buildout of AI factory infrastructure. Partners are expanding capacity to meet growing demand from ente...
30/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
30/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
Berklees New Program in Morocco Explores an African Musical Tradition The partnership with the Gnaoua and World Music Festival that helps musicians dig deeper into their artistry and bridge musical cultures.
