Nass El Ghiwane (People of Ghiwane), “Assallama” (Peace)
(Blue Silver, 1997/AMD, 2010) – ALL TRACKS FCC CLEAN
Reviewed by Abu Ramses

Four young men from a poverty slum in Casablanca, Morocco - Omar Sayed (bendir & vocals); Larbi Batma (tbilat); Boujmaa Hagour (vocals); Alal Yaala (fretless banjo); plus Aziz Tahiri (guembri, later replaced by Abderhmane Paco) - formed the band in the late 1960s. Lyrics highlight oppressive social and political conditions using traditional melodies, sufi chants and traditional instruments like the bendir (frame drum), tbilat (furnace drums) and guembri of the Gnawa sufis plus fretless banjo. Khaled, “the king of rai” got his start singing covers of Nass El Ghiwane. This is the last of their “classic period” albums before Paco left the band and Batma died of lung cancer. Sorry I can only do a few of the song title translations because Moroccan dialect is very different from eastern Arabic.

Be careful: there is only a short space between the tracks.

Tracks
1. Bnademe Wala Makhour – Opens with slow guembri solo, then spoken voice poem introducing the next track - 3:06
***2. Assallama (Peace) - Upbeat with whole ensemble singing about miserable conditions in Morocco - 3:23
3. Lghadya – Up-beat; whole ensemble - 1:29
4. Kassete - Mid-tempo solo fretless banjo intro, spoken word; everybody joins in on a more up-tempo last minute - 4:37
5. A Waldi (To my father) – Another fretless banjo intro, then guembri and percussion 1:54
**6. Lhira – up-beat call and response singing, ends with a plaintive flute solo - 5:23
7. Bohte Bessar – Lots of percussion on this - 5:58
8. Ache Jralek (What happened to you?) – Ney (flute) intro, spoken word poem, then percussion, wild instrumental and vocal - 3:19
***9. Charbi – All up-beat. They let it all out on this one - 8:07
**10. Takssime (Improvisation) – Up-beat call and response singing with full instrumentation - 3:25
11. El Kalma (The Word) Up-beat, solo wailing - 4:00
12. Zyane El Hal – Up-beat; whole ensemble, call and response - 2:04