Justin Adams & Mohamed Errebbaa at Musicport Festival

Justin Adams & Mohamed Errebbaa performing toura toura a song from traditional GNAWA repertoire.
Justin Adams, guitarist, producer and composer, has been a creator of wonders with Robert Plant in his band, the aptly named Sensational Spaceshifters. His production on landmark albums by Tinariwen and Rachid Taha highlight his feel for North African groove, while his award winning collaborations with Gambian maestro Juldeh Camara linked griot tradition with raw blues spirit.
His early work with artists such as Jah Wobble, Sinead O’Connor and Natacha Atlas was infused with the spirit of post-punk London, while his recent duo album Still Moving with Mauro Durante, leader of top Southern Italian Pizzica group CGS was called “inspired“ and “astonishing“ by the Guardian, “as unexpected as it is captivating“ by Le Monde.
Mohamed is a Master of Gnawa music from Morocco. He began performing with traditional Sufi brotherhoods in Rabat, Morocco at the age of 10, and received the title of Maalem, (Master of the Gnawa tradition) at the age of 28 after working with many of the great Gnawa players like Maalem Said Oughassal
Since then Mohamed Errebbaa has collaborated with international artists Trevy Felix, Nelly Stharre and Justin Adams
The Gnawa and Their Origins
The term "Gnawa" refers firstly to a North African ethnic minority that traces its origins to West African slaves and soldiers. Gnawa communities in the Maghreb (Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia) trace their origins to the Sudan, not meaning the present-day nation of Sudan, but rather sub-Saharan African in general. (The word "Sudan," after all, is merely the Arabic word for "the Blacks.") Thus, like the term "African-American," Gnawa refers to a group of people whose ancestors came from diverse regions of Africa but took on a collective identity in exile. In song texts, the Gnawa refer to their origins among the Bambara, Fulani, and Haussa, and history points to a large influx of them primarily in the Niger river bend area of Mali and Niger. The origins of a black African community in the Maghreb may be traced back at least as far as Sultan Ahmed el-Mansour's conquest of the Songhai empire in 1591, when several thousand men and women were brought north as servants. Other documents make mention of a black African presence and musical tradition in the Maghreb as early as the eleventh century. The slave trade in Morocco continued until the early years of the twentieth century.