Mourad Belouadi - "Mawama"

On April 25th, 2014, we recorded Mourad Belouadi in his ancestral town of M'hamid El Ghizlane, at the southeastern edge between Morocco and Algeria. This is the first of 10 songs we recorded, and it is a traditional Gnawa song.
Gnawa music has its roots in the slave trade, which displaced many Central and West Africans (mostly the Fulani people) to North Africa. Over the years it has mixed pre-Islamic African traditions with classical Islamic Sufism, and today can be found mostly in Morocco and some parts of Algeria.
"Mawama" is both a song of displacement, and one of spiritual transcendence.
Mourad is a brilliant multi-instrumentalist and photographer who was born blind. At the age of 11 (after a few unsuccessful attempts) he finally underwent an operation which allowed him to see the world for the first time.
We called Mourad "Magic Fingers" because of his incredible ability to turn any object he laid his hands on into amazing music.