Maalem Abdeslam Alikane and Ray Lema at Essaouira 2007 الصويرة

This is my first posting about the recent Essaouira Gnaoua and World Music Festival.

Maalem Abdeslam Alikane (Guembri Morocco) played with Tyour Gnaoua and Ray Lema (Guitar, Keyboards Congo), Adellah El Miry (Violin Morocco), Soriba Kouyate (Kora Senegal) and Mokthar Samba (Drums Morocco-Senegal), Camilo Nu (Guitar Mexico) at the Essaouira 2007 Gnaoua and World Music Festival in June 2007. Part of the through track 9, they were joined by Jean-Philippe Rykiel (Keyboards France who had been playing in the Mustapha Bakbou concert over at Bab Marrakech - listen out for his distictive guitar of the mp3 player of this concert in the right hand side-bar of this blog.

Thanks to Camilo Nu for advising me (via my YouTube channel) of the corrected line-up for the concert. I had previously being showing Cyril Atef on drums and Jean-Philippe on guitar and hadn't acknowledged Camilo at all. Sorry for the mistake - I'd been using the line-up shown in the festival guide, and, I guess that they are subject to last-minute changes.

Location and Timing: Place Moulay Hassan Saturday 23rd June 23:00

This is Part 1 (3:24) of the 8th number that they played:



and this is part 2 (8:13) of the same number:



In answer to nirvomind I recorded this piece (http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=V4Dg1fRLowM) at around 23:00 on Saturday night (23rd June) at the Moulay Hassan. Maalem Adbelkebir Merchance played at 20:30 on the Friday night in the Moulay Hassan at which time I was recording Hoba Hoba Spirit at Bab Marrakech.

It may interest Blogger readers and listeners on my YouTube channel (http://uk.youtube.com/DaftNotStupid) to know that Maalem Abdeslam Alikane is one of the founders of the Essaouira festival and that this session was one of three Musical Creations sponsored by the festival this year. Alikane chose this occasion to reunite musicians he has played with before and who have a strong affinity for Gnaoua music. I believe that this session was one of the high points of the festival, though my wife still thinks I'm stupid for missing out at the Asian Dub Foundation who played at Bab Marrakech at the same time. "Daft not stupid" I said. Anyway, I did record a short rehearsal of theirs which is also available on my channel.

Unusually, I made this recording in the audience, close to the stage. I like the richness of sound I get there and being deep within an Essaouira audience is a wonderful social as well as musical experience.

For the technically minded, I clamped the microphone to the scaffolding of the official TV platform, so I was not only optimally placed but was able to dance without holding the microphone for 2 hours.

Anyway, thanks for listening. I'll be posting more great music from the Essaouira 2007 festival, so why not subscribe so you'll hear straight away.

Cheers,
John