North Africa

Mahmoud Guinia

This one is perfectly hypnotic gnawa music from Morocco. Gnawa refers to both the ethnic group of blacks who originated as slaves from Sub-Saharan Africa, and a Sufi Islam religious sect. The music in gnawa is intended to invoke a trance, using the three-stringed lute-like instrument called the sintir and iron castanets called krakebs. I really love this album.

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Al-Qahirah - Classical Music of Cairo, Egypt

This is part of a fantastic and expansive box set called the Music of Islam. The classical Arabic music on this album represents modern performances of very old Arab musical traditions. Cairo has long been a major cultural center for the Arab world, including music. The Arab tonalities and scales are infectious, evocative of a very old and influential culture that wraps around the Mediterranean and beyond.

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Various Artists / Sublime Frequencies - 1970's Algerian Proto-Raï Underground

Raï literally means opinion but is colloquially used as an interjection along the lines of "oh, yeah!" It refers in this case to a form of folk music in northwest Algeria, specifically in the city of Wahran (Oran). In the early 1970s, a new group of singers and musicians were operating on the northwest coast, and what they pioneered was a sound that eventually reached worldwide status by the end of the decade; however, their names are relatively unknown to this day outside Algeria. Due to censorship and government-controlled music diffusion, this scene and lyrical style was forced underground and banned from broadcasts, yet slowly built a small following around the seaside cabarets of Oran. The sound is sort of a mixture of the Spanish influences of flamenco and cabaret, gnawa music from Morocco, and the music of Arabic nomads. Great.

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