Hamid El Kasri

Moroccan maâlem, a master musician of the Gnawa tradition, born in 1961 in Ksar El Kebir and living in Rabat. Gnawa is a Moroccan spiritual and ritual tradition with West African roots south of the Sahara, carried within an Islamic frame; its ritual heart is the lila, the night-long ceremony of trance and healing. He sings and plays the guembri, the three-stringed bass lute, and brings together the Gnawa rhythms of northern and southern Morocco.