Essaouira Gnaoua and World Music Festival 2010 - Report, Videos, Photographs

I've just come back from the Essaouira Gnaoua and World Music Festival 2010 where Maggie and I had a really great time, listened to lots of good music and made lots of new friends.This year, we were given press accreditation, with what I came to realise were precious Camera badges, that allowed us privileged access right in front of the stages. I shot loads of what I hope will turn out to be great video, though your opinion on that is more important than mine. I lost control of the sound quality some of the time, in the heat of getting better pictures, but I think I've found a way around that, if we get to go again and get the badges again. But enough of that.

The festival opened as usual with a parade of Gnaoui, but this year that was supplemented by a number of troops of Fantasia riders on horseback, led by their Masters, all carrying ancient-looking rifles. 75 horsemen in a circle, hoeses all calm and controlled but frisky with it. Troops approach one another and pull back. The lead Master starts to speak - addressing all of the troops. Then Bang! All 75 rifles fire at one. Wow - took me by surprise.

First up in Place Moulay Hassan after the open speeches were the two Maalem brothers Kouyou - Mohamed and Said, joined after a few gnaoua numbers by the Sukishvili Georgian National Ballet, who were not at all what I had expected. My only past experince of Georgian National Ballet had been tall and statuesqe women in long white gowns who appeared to float across the stage. Take a look at the video when I post it and you'll see how wrong I was.

Videos

Here's a YouTube playlist that I'm starting to build. There'll be more music appearing in the coming days, weeks, and (knowing me) months:

This post is work in progress - be sure to check back soon for some new material.

I've managed to crack the problem of posting videos on YouTube in HD this year. I'm using the same camera as before (Panasonic GS400) which records in pretty good quality though not native HD. The secret appears to be to render the clips with a large frame size (1440x1080) and using an AVCHD codec, though this does generate very large files, about 1.0 GB for a 10 minute clip. The resulting quality on YouTube is however really good, and I might re-render and re-post some of my previous years' movies if I ever get the time.

Interview with Hassan Boussou

This year, I was given the opportunity to request interviews with some of the performers. I asked to speak with Maalem Hassan Boussou, since I really love his music, and was lucky to be able to talk with him for 10 minutes or so at the Sofitel Hotel one afternoon. To be honest, at first I found the experience a little overwhelming, but once we got started, it seemd to work quite well. I recorded the interview, which I've added to my YouTube playlist, but I've also included it separately below.

I asked about the importance of fusion to his music and learned that what is most important is the traditional Gnaoua, but that he has mainly started to play fusion since he started living in France where he meets and works with a wider variety of musicians. He would like to see Gnaoua become more recognised internationally and considers it part of his responsibility to help to achieve that. When he plays, he considers the audience to be very important, "a plant must have water if it is to grow" was how he explained that to me. I asked a rather complicated question about the frequent and complex time changes and what I called the 'musical punctuation' that seems to divide up some of his longer pieces, and he explained that such changes of tempo were key to the Boussou school of Gnaoua, developed by his late father, the great Maalem H'mida Boussou. The interview video runs to a little over 10 minutes, and if you speak French you'll get a lot more out of it than if you just speak English. Many thanks to Ibtissam Alaoui, from the festival press office, for translating my questions and Hassan's replies from and to English.

Photographs

Here's a slideshow of some of the photographs that I took that I have loaded up to Flickr. I took these with my camcorder, which lets me take still photos while I'm recording a video.

Vince Millett

Vince Millet added a comment with links to some great photographs that he took. Just follow the links to these six Flikr slides-shows to get a great sense of the everyday excitement of the Essaouira festival. Thanks for these, Vince.
Opening Parade: http://www.flickr.com/photos/brokendrumphotography/sets/72157624411100934/

Maâlem Mustapha Bakbou: http://www.flickr.com/photos/brokendrumphotography/sets/72157624284357785/

Dhafer Youssef: http://www.flickr.com/photos/brokendrumphotography/sets/72157624283906685/

Maâlem Saïd Ouressan:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/brokendrumphotography/sets/72157624407655628/

Speed Caravan:http://www.flickr.com/photos/brokendrumphotography/sets/72157624407510136/

Around the festival: http://www.flickr.com/photos/brokendrumphotography/sets/72157624286342899/

Audio

I was able to record a couple of Audio-only sessions from our balcony at Bab Marrakech while I was over at Moulay Hassan with the video camera. Here's the first of them, featuring Maalem Aziz Bakbou with some member of the Armenian Navy Band (among others):


This isn't working, and I'm not sure why. I'll try to sort it out.




MaggieKnutson.com

My wife Maggie has also wrtten extensively about the festival, and you can read what she says and see her own photographs on her blog here http://maggieknutson.blogspot.com/2010/07/wonder-and-beauty-of-gnaoua-and-world.html.

Essaouira Gnaoua festival Facebook groups

I've been one of the admins for the i just can't wait for the next gnaoua's festival in Essaouira !! Facebook group for a couple of years and I always knew there was at least one other, but today I was looking around and I found a whole bunch more. I couldn't find a way to create a Facebook supergroup (let me know if you know how), so I decided to list and link to them all here, on my blog. Post comments if you knolw of others, and I'll add them to  the post.

• Group i just can't wait for the next gnaoua's festival in Essaouira !!
• Group Festival Gnaoua et Musiques du Monde 2009
• Group FESTIVAL DE GNAWA A ESSAOUIRA
• Group festival gnaoua d 'essaouira 2009
• Group J'irai au festival Essaouira - Gnaoua et musiques du monde 2010 (INCHALLAH)
• Page Festival Gnaoua et Musiques du Monde d'Essaouira
• Group  Festival Gnaoua et Musiques du Monde

Some of these groups have over 400 members and have good posts, photos, and videos, so, if you are in facebook, take a look and join some of them.

A long week-end in Amsterdam, March 2010

Last Friday, Maggie and I flew to Amsterdam for the week-end. We got a 7am flight from Southampton airport, less than 10 miles away, getting to Amsterdam's central station by 10am local time - not bad considering UK is an hour ahead.

Once again we stayed at the same little hotel on the Prinzengracht, this time in a room facing onto the canal. The only down side was that it was on the 4th floor, and if you've ever been in a narrow 17th century dutch town house, you'll know exactly how challenging that can be. I'm 6'7'' and on one of the flights I had to limbo backwards to get down the stairs.

Amsterdam is a great place for shopping. If you like hats, the English Hatter is a great place to go. I thought I'd lost my black Kangol 504 so bought another one, along with a black cotton/linen mix in a similar style, though when I got home I found my old one in the loft.

Since it was Maggie's birthday, I got her a pretty little brooch from Laloli, and as I'd bought a number of things there over the past few years, Sandra (one of the three sisters who make all of the jewelery) gave Maggie a pair of silver and pearl ear-rings as a present. Thank you, Sandra, Monique and Marianne.

Go Gallery

In 2008, I went to the Go Gallery to buy a Moon Calendar and discovered Sit's Unwired exhibition which was running at the time, but on my last two trips I just couldn't find it. I must have walked up and down the odd side of the Prinzengracht four times but just couldn't see it. This year, while paying for the Duvel I'd just drunk, I asked the owner of the little bar on the even side of the canal (No. 44, I think) if she knew the Go Gallery, and she said "Oh yes, it's just a few doors down". You know, I'd been convinced that it was on the other side, but there it was, at Prinzengracht 64!.

This time, the gallery was running the first solo exhibition by Michiel van der Born, a young Dutch typographer. The exhibition is called "26 Characters", and features 26 acrylic paintings of all of the letters of the alphabet. Here's the composite view used to promote the show. I currently use this in tesselated form as my lap-tops background.

 I didn't buy one of those, but I did buy "typotalk" (4/15), another piece of his work on show there:

I do love typography and can't wait to get it framed and hung. Here's my YouTube playlist of some good typography videos that I've collected.

The above two images in this post are Copyright © Michiel van der Born.

Speaking of Moon Calendars, I bought the new one and the owner gave me the one from 2009 that I missed getting last year. Thanks so much.

De Bierkoning

My usual mode of transport in Amsterdam is walking and believe me, I did a lot of it in those three days! It's strange you know, but for such a small and compact city, most of the places I wanted to be were a surprising distance from each other. One day, while walking between two such places, I spotted De Bierkoning, possibly the best beer shop in the world, and certainly the best I've ever been in. Confused by the enormous choice of what seemed like 1,000 different bottles, I plumped for a single bottle of green label (or kleine) Duvel. At 7.5%, it's about 1% weaker than the regular. Cold-filtered and sold in 25cl bottles, it's perfect for drinking ice cold and straight from the bottle.

Yellow and Red meet

That's the title of the piece of glass by Ton Verdegaal that I bought at the Tatiana De La Fuente Art Gallery at Prinzengracht 308a. I'll try to take a good photo of it and post it here. It looks beautiful in our dining room, front-lit, casting a yellow shadow on the wall behind. You can see some wondeful examples of his work, though not my piece, on his web site.

Maggie and I saw it on Saturday while we were walking somewhere and I didn't manage to get back there until late on Sunday afternoon when the gallery had already closed. Not only did the owner open the shop and show me the work while her guest was left waiting, but she personally delivered the piece to my hotel, securely wrapped for air travel and complete with it's certificate of authenticity. Thank you, Sara, for such wonderful service.

Essaouira Gnaoua and World Music Festival 2010 - June 24-27

UPDATE 4 July 2010

Now that the festival has been and gone, if you want to read my festival report, listen to some of the music, watch some videos, or see some of the photos that I took, just follow this link http://daftnotstupid.blogspot.com/2010/07/essaouira-gnaoua-and-world-music.html


UPDATE 10 May 2010

At last, the official dates are now up on the festival web-site, so you don't just need to take my word for it. Here's the image that is currently posted there:

The dates are as I previously posted - Thursday to Sunday, June 24-27, 2010.

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I've been in touch with the Festival organisers and am pleased to announce that the 13th Essaouira Gnaoua and World Music Festival will be held Thursday to Sunday, June 24-27, 2010.

The official festival website at http://www.festival-gnaoua.net is still showing the 2009 dates, and almost none of the links there work, but I'm sure that they will sort that out before too long. The line-up and the updated website are usually posted until late-May/early-June, but they usually update the banner image with the dates round about now. If any of you need to books flights or hotels, and want to confirm the dates, I suggest you call A3 Communications (contact details on the festival web page).

If you can't wait until June and need to hear some gnaoua music right now, you'll find plenty on the playlists here or over on my YouTube channel.

Essaouira 2009 playlist with music and video

I am slowly building a playlist on YouTube with music that I recorded at last week's Essaouira 2009 Gnaoua and World Music festival. There are only a few numbers there so far, but don't worry, there will be more to come.


So far I have three numbers from Hassan Boussou and Sewarye's great closing set in Place Moulay Hassan. It was really great. You should have been there, if if you couldn't make it, or if you did and you want to hear it again, just press the button on the playlist below.

Essaouira Gnaoua and World Music Festival 2009 - Lineup

News - 8th June 2009

At last, the festival home page now has a link to download the program, so we now know some of the artists who will be playing. Here's a link to the program - look for Télécharger le Programme 2009 just below the flash panel on the homepage. I've been looking at the festival site for weeks, and the menu options once yo enter the site are still only showing the arttsts and program from 2008 (the 11th festival), so be careful that you don't get confused.

For more details about the festival, as and when they post them, visit the official site. There is also a Facebook group for the event, where you can talk with some of the 187 (last count) people who have confirmed they will be attending.

Here's the list:

Residents groups
- The prestigious orchestra of the WDR (thoough it might actually be the WDR Big Band)& the king of raï, Cheb Khaled and Maâlem Hamid El Kasri, with the participation of festival artistic director, Karim Ziad and the celebrated percussionist, Rhani Krija.
- Maâlem Abdeslam Alikane's group, with the musicians of the group Jouala and the kora player, Albaye Cissoko.
- Maâlem Mohamed Kouyou his musicians, with the celebrated New Orleans group, Donald Harrison & Congo Nation.
- Maâlem Abdenbi El Gadari, Unes & Hak’x.

Fusion concerts
- Maâlem Mahmoud Guinea, Afoxe Loni et Stephane Belmondo
- Maâlem Mustapha Bakbou and Sixun
- Maâlem Abderrahim Benthami, the trio Amrat Hussain and Foulane
- Maâlem Mahmoud Guinea, Martin Vassilev, Stephane Belmondo and the Brazilian group Afoxe Loni
- Maâlem Kbiber, Meddy Gerville, Laatabi Diouani and Rachid El Guerrab

Invited groups
- Babani Kone
- Blue Mogador
- Rais Brahim
- Arrested Development
- Mazagan
- Sewarye & Maâlem Hassan Boussou

Acoustic concerts
- Fusion between Agadir Gnaoua and Congo Nation
- Fusion between Maâlem Omar Hayat, Meddy Gerville, Laatabi Diouani and Lindigo
- Fusion between Maâlem Abdenbi El Gadari, Ablaye Cissoko and Foulane
- Sidi Ali Lasmar Stambali
- Maâlem Abdelkebir Merchane
- Trio Amrat Hussain


Looks like we've got a great festival ahead of us. I hope to meet lots of you there. John

New DaftNotStupid logo?

Which one do you like as the new DaftNotStupid logo? Feel free to comment. Stamps bought at De Posthumuswinkel, Amsterdam. Printing all mine.

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Save Barton Farm - protest march - Winchester

A short video documenting the march held in Winchester to protest against the proposed building of 2000 houses on farmland on the edge of Winchester. It's a long story, best understood by going to www.savebartonfarm.org.


The proposal needs to be understood in the context that the land was formerly owned by Winchester College, who sold it for development to Cala Homes, so that the College could continue to 'educate' the sons of the wealthy upper class (OK - there might also be a few girls, and a few scholarships, and the kids of a few working class people) - but largely its a class thing. They don't mind sending there kids to Winchester, but they usually don't live here themselves so they don't car if they f%&ck it up for us residents.

Thanks to Rob Berry (who just happened to be busking on the High Street as the march went past) for supplying the musical background to the second half of the film. Films work so much better with music, and, as many of my regular viewers know, it's what mainly motivates me. It's really appropriate that the lyrics he's singing is "You've got to help me - I can't do this all by myself". I'm sure that's just how Gavin Blackman (the chairman of the Save Barton Farm Group) feels sometimes.

Thanks also to the lovely lady from the CPRE whose name I forget to get. Passion will out!

earport Amsterdam, 2009

I'd planned a short week-end in Amsterdam, and on the Thursday evening googled for some live music while I was in town. I stumbled upon earport, billed as a post fusion symphony , created by Paul Oomen. Fusion it was, but not like I'm used to in Essaouira. This was altogether more refined, more planned, but just as joyous and just as fulfilling. I recorded the whole evening - some four hours or so of music - from the balcony of the Conservatorium van Amsterdam. My thanks to Maartje from earport, for making it all happen.

I don't have time to list all of the musicians now, but I will be posting lots of the music, and will have a mp3 player available here pretty soon.

Here's a piece written and played by Jan Wouter Oostenrijk with his Maghreb Jazz formation. It's called Feel cha' aby (Track 2),named after the Moroccan chaaby rhythm, according to JWO.



I'm in the process of building an mp3 player, but it will take a little while to get everything posted.



Artist details
Track 1a - Diego Nicolas group

www.marcosbaggiani.blogspot.com
www.celanobaggianigroup.com
www.themeetingpoint-impro.com
Fra Fra Sound on MySpace

In England, one tends to think of the recorder as a child's instrument, so, be prepared to be disabused of any such preconceptions, when you listen to Raphaela Danksagmuller playing with Jalliya Ensemble and them with Nello Mirando and co. Not on the palylist yet, but will be there soon. In the meantime, take a listen to her on her MySpace profile

Eboman - the human mixer / splicer - maybe not how he would describe himself. I'll be adding one of his pieces to the mp3 player, but you really need to watch him in action to get the whole picture. So, take a look at some of his videos on his MySpace profile: Eboman at MySpace

Who would have thought it. DaftNotStupid is an old romantic. Something about the group that closed earport on Saturday afternoon really got to me. If you've listened to any music that I've recorded and talked about, you wouldn't have thought that this was my style at all. Anyway, take a listen to the final track on the mp3 player and see what you think. Amsterdamse Zeedijkkoor - the Amsterdam Zeedijk Choir - put on a great show - visually and aurally.

I've been going to Amsterdam, off and on, for nearly 40 years now, since my early days as a Dam-slaper, so maybe I'm starting to think like a native. Zeedijk is just around the corner (or across the gracht) from the Dam, so maybe that's got something to do with it. Whatever, take a listen and enjoy. Learn more about this well-hatted choral group on their web-site.

More info at earportamsterdam.nl, myspace.com/earportamsterdam, myspace.com/janwouteroostenrijk

All music copyright of earport and / or its owners.

Musicians and composers will be credited. Write to john@daftnotstupid.com

Essaouira 2009

I've just seen that they have posted the dates for this year's Essaouira Gnaoua and World Music Festival - 2009