Morocco: Deborah Kapchan On the Gnawa of Morocco

[Afropop] Deborah Kapchan is a professor of Performance Studies at New York University, and the principle voice for Afropop Worldwide's Hip Deep program, Traveling Spirit Masters: The Gnawa of Morocco. Professor Kapchan has been doing research in Morocco since 1990. In 2007, she published a book on her work with the Gnawa, Traveling Spirit Masters: Moroccan Gnawa, Trance and Music in the Global Marketplace (Wesleyan University Press). Banning Eyre interviewed her in her office in New York in 2009. Here's their

Morocco: The Lure and Lore of Gnawa

[Afropop] The Gnawa musical healers of Morocco are a perennial fascination within the broad tableau of the Afropop story. They bring together potent themes--slavery and its legacy of displacement and diaspora, music that induces trance and even spirit possession, and the paradox of ancient African realities finding their place in the contemporary world. The music is instantly recognizable and surprisingly durable. More than 20 years after I first heard the boom and thwack of a well-played sinter (3-stringed,