Innov Gnawa is a Grammy-nominated musical band dedicated to exploring Morocco’s venerable Gnawa music tradition in the heart of New York City. Formed in the summer of 2014 and led by Moroccan expat Samir LanGus. Innov has delved deep into the roots and rituals of Gnawa music, and made a big splash in NYC, playing some of the city’s most prestigious rooms including Lincoln Center, Music Hall of Williamsburg, Brooklyn Bowl and the storied backroom of Brooklyn’s Barbès.

 

For the uninitiated, gnawa music is the ritual trance music of Morocco’s black communities, originally descended from enslaved people and soldiers once brought to Morocco from Northern Mali and Mauritania. Often called “The Moroccan Blues”, Gnawa music has a raw, hypnotic power that’s fascinated outsiders as diverse as writer/composer Paul Bowles and jazz giant Randy Weston. The music is utterly singular, played on an array of unique instruments — from the lute-like Sintir that the Musician uses to call the tune, to the metal qarqaba (castinets) with which the kouyos (chorus) keep time and pound out clattering, hypnotic rhythms.

 

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