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Coney Island Dancers

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This is a recording I made on a magical night of Gnawa music at TeArte in Barcelona - a privately-owned community space for music, art, tea and conversation. 

Gnawa musicians play a kind of deeply hypnotic trance music, marked by low-toned, rhythmic guembri melodies, call-and-response singing, hand clapping and cymbals called krakeb (plural of karkaba). Gnawa ceremonies use music and dance to evoke ancestral saints who can drive out evil, cure psychological ills, or remedy scorpion stings. The Gnawa (or Gnaoua, Ghanawa, Ghanawi, Gnawi) people originated from the ancient Ghanaian Empire of Ouagadougou (present day Mauritania, Senegal, Gambia, Burkino Faso and 85% of Mali.

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