Wednesday 2 July 2008

Essaouira 2008 Gnaoua and World Music Festival - First Impressions

Maalem Omar Hyatt

I've just come back from another great Essaouira Gnaoua and World Music Festival and will be writing a lot about it and posting some pretty good audio, and new this year - video, of all of the sessions that I saw and heard. Hightlights for me were Maalem Omar Hyatt, Groupe Bassekou Kouyaté, Orchestre National de Barbes, the heavyweight drummers form Korea - Samulnori Molgae, Ky-Mani Marley and Maâlem Hamid El Kasri.

I recorded over twenty (20) hours of video and another 10 hours or so of audio. It's taken me three or four hours to create a 7 minute video clip that I am currently uploading to YouTube, so you can see that I've got my work cut out for the coming months.

Here's the start of a long number that I need to break to pieces because it's so long. It features Maalem Omar Hayat with Franck Vaillant (Drums), Jon Balcke Norway (Piano / keyboards), Mohamed Derouich (Guitar) France / Morocco, Ibrahim Maalouf (Trumpet / Lebanon).



This clip shows the great drummers from Samulnori Molgae:



After the Hamid El Kasri set, Maggie said that Ky-Mani Marley would have to be pretty good to beat it. Well, here's the evidence. Ky-Mani comes out fighting - and folks, there's more to come. Here's his opening number:



The closing set of the festival was back to Sunday, once again, after last year when it closed on Saturday. There were a couple of changes though: the two sets started a little later and were held at Moulay Hassan, not Bab Marrakech. Here's a couple of numbers by Orchestre National de Barbes who finished it all off very nicely, thank you!




Franck Vailant playing with Omar Hayat

11 comments:

  1. do you have video raissa& raiss from bab doukkala or groupe bana de marrakech at place el khayma?
    best
    piotr

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  2. Sorry, I never managed to get up to the new Bab Doukala scene, so I meiised Raissa and Raiss. I also missed Group Bana de Marrakech at Playce Khayma on Friday. I did however record some of Issaoua at Place Khayma on Saturday and I plan to post some of that over the next week or so. There are so many scenes now that its impossible to catch everything. I'd also hoped to see Jbara at the Meditel and I missed hime too.

    Ciao, John

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  3. for me Ibara- no, too many heavy rock influences,
    strange but Issaoua at bab doukkla- excelent, day after at khayma, different show -a was a bit disapoined, but whole festival very nice- whole trip- two weeks without eu/usa music
    best piotr

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  4. Hi Piotr, Good News! I've been looking through my tapes (all 25 of them) and my notebook, and I've discovered that I did record Groupe Bana de Marrakech on the Friday. Watching the tape again, I remembered how good they were and how they were able to get the whole crowd in the little square singing and dancing along with them. Give me a couple of days, and I'llpost one or two of their numbers on YouTube, and add them to my playlist. I've also got quite a few shots of the crowd, so you migtht see yourself there.

    Cheers, John

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  5. excelent, there was a one piece with words in chorus ' telecom,telepost, peteteeee' or something like that, unfortunetely i don't know arabic but whole show was very funny,
    i'm waiting
    piotr

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  6. Hi Piotr, I couldn't find the PTT piece that you mentioned, but I have posted a 10 minute clip that I hope you'll like. The audio is a little intense but it's still a whole lot of fun. I've got another 30 mins of this, so I might post something else in a while.

    Enjoy, John

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  7. thanks a lot, this piece was close to the end of show but i like all , then if its possible would be nice to see other parts and to be back at this place,
    thanks a lot,
    best
    piotr

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  8. hi, i would love to make it there this year. however i wont be able to get holiday the first 1.5 wk of each month due to work.
    would you kindly tell me when it was last year? I hope it is going to be the last 2 weeks of the months? Thanks a lot, D

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  9. This years dates have just recently been posted on the festival site, and I added them to a new post on this blog just a few days ago. Here's the link.

    ReplyDelete