Simo Lagnawi
Album: Gnawa London
Label: Waulk
Tracks: 10
Website: http://www.gnawa.co.uk/

"Gnawa London" is an album that on the surface appears to be an album about movement as it is music, almost feeling like a North African morris album, but as you work your way into it you find yourself picking up on the more spiritual nature of the tracks.

It turns out that Gwana is a sacred spiritual trance music that was transported from Sub-Saharan Africa to North Africa as a by-product of the African slave trade and was a way of reaching back to their spiritual home.

For "Gnawa London", Moroccan musician, Simo Lagnawi, has brought that music further North and brings a contemporary theme to the traditional music and in doing so connects the music right back to its roots.

The album includes songs built around the Arab Spring, as well as songs about displacement and loss of power on a more general level. There is a real sense of drive in the percussive nature of the tracks one that leaves you in no doubt that the rhythm of movement plays an important part in the spirituality and character that underpin the album.

I'm not going to pretend that I pick up all the inferences and influences that permeate "Gnawa London", except to say that it comes across as an album that you feel rather than one where the narrative is the imperative and without a doubt it is an album where the spirituality flows through.

Neil King