Lecture Cynthia Becker

'Becoming Gnawa in Morocco'

Cynthia Becker is a professor of art history and architecture at Boston University. Her research and teaching focus on the visual culture of Africa and the diaspora, with a particular emphasis on North Africa, concentrating on the late nineteenth century to the present. In addition to her book Amazigh Arts in Morocco (2006), her research has been published in numerous museum catalogues, volumes and journals, including African Arts, Contemporary Islam, Critical Interventions, RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics, and The Journal of North African Studies. Her most recent book, Blackness in Morocco: Gnawa Identity through Music and Visual Culture (U of MN Press, 2020), explores how the concept of blackness is expressed in Morocco through clothing, visual arts, religious ceremonies, and musical performances.

Becoming Gnawa in post-slavery Morocco

In contemporary Morocco, Gnawa music is associated with the world music scene, with musicians performing in public squares or on stage at the popular Gnawa and World Music Festival in Essaouira. Although "Gnawa" refers to a specific type of musical performance performed on the festival stage, it is also a description for the descendants of enslaved Sahelian Africans in Morocco and the spirit possession and healing ceremonies they perform. Although one might associate the performance of sacred songs on the festival stage with the dilution of the authenticity of Gnawa, a secular performance practice has existed in public spaces since the nineteenth century, parallel to sacred rituals in the private sphere.

Through the study of music and visual culture, this presentation shows how Gnawa emerged in the late nineteenth century as a performative practice associated with blackness and slavery. This was a period of intense global contact and economic collapse due to increased European incursions into Morocco. When Morocco became a French protectorate in 1912, slave markets were closed and many of the enslaved had been freed. One way of economic survival for manumitted slaves was to perform music on the streets in exchange for money. Thus, from the beginning of “Gnawa” as an identity, it was linked to self-commodification. An examination of Gnawa self-representations in early photography, musical instruments, and both secular and sacred performances reveals much about the agency of those who operated in a web of asymmetrical power relations and constructed their own self-image.

Podcast van het New Books Network, 16 juli 2021

Zwartheid in Marokko: Gnawa-identiteit door muziek en beeldcultuur door Cynthia J Becker

Gehost door Alize Arıcan https://newbooksnetwork.com/blackness-in-morocco

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