Samir LanGus: Gnawa Healing & Trance Music from Agadir, Morocco.
Samir LanGus: Photo By Tom Pinch
Samir LanGus is a Grammy nominated artist from Agadir, Morocco. When he was eight years old, with family roots in the Issawa Sufi tradition, he began learning Gnawa music, a spiritual trance music of the West African minority of Morocco. Often called “The Moroccan Blues,”
Gnawa trance music has fascinated artists, including writer/composer Paul Bowles, Randy Weston, and Jimi Hendrix. The music is played on the lute-like sintir and the metal qarqaba castanets, with which the kouyos (chorus) keep time with clattering, hypnotic rhythms. Samir LanGus adds his own contemporary spin with additional jazz instrumentation to the traditional Gnawa repertoire.
Langus has performed at Lincoln Center, the Music Hall of Williamsburg, Brooklyn Bowl, Barbès, and Terminal 5, as well as the Kennedy Center, Red Rocks Amphitheater, and the Coachella Festival.
He is the founder of the band Innov Gnawa which worked with the English DJ/Producer Bonobo on the Grammy Nominated best electronic song “Bambro Koyo Ganda”
