Sight

I like a good dance party, and I love a good dance party if it’s in someone’s living room. On my fourth night with my family, the stars aligned for me to experience just that.

After a week of hard classes and new experiences, coming home from journaling, relaxing and drinking mint tea on the rooftop of Café Clock on Friday night, I was looking forward to a good couscous dinner and a relatively quiet night watching tv and observing ‘les betises’ (the foolishness) of my little host brother. Instead, I opened the door to our flat and was bombarded with music, food smells and about 35 people. It was party night.

I should have guessed from the fact that my host mom was getting henna applied to her hands and feet earlier that day. Also, it was Friday – who doesn’t like to party on Friday? Especially in a Muslim country where Friday is the holy day.

However – this was not your routine living room dance party. 

Gnawa musician

 The living room was packed with women and children, with the exception of 3 men sitting together on one end. I quickly realized that they were the entertainment, and thought 'I could get used to this.' The three men, dressed one each in yellow, blue and red robes, were Gnawa musicians: descendants, or at least respecting practicioners, of an old North African Sufi tribe.

Over mint tea, coconut cookies and about 15 other pastry varietals, I enjoyed listening to the call and response music, backed up with instrumental sounds from hand cymbals and a lute-like square instrument, called a gimbri. I observed the dance moves of the women in the room, slightly relieved to be sitting in a corner smashed amongst several women and therefore unable to join in. Right about the time I was noticing the smell from a gigantic incense burner wafting from below one of the musicians, two of the women (including my host mom) began to rock back and forth quite violently. The other women cleared everyone else away from these two so that they had the floor to themselves. Half expecting breakdancing moves to come next, I continued watching with interest and perhaps some minor anxiety.

Women dancing. My host mother, Siham, in white

The rocking got more exaggerated as the forward motion brought the women’s heads almost as low as their knees, and the music became louder, with each thump on the gimbri more isolated.  Somehow the incense smell seemed to strengthen too. After what felt like eons, with a final dramatic note, the musicians completed the song. I, being the live music-loving Westerner that I am, raised my hands to clap only to find that I was the only one. Each of the dancing women had fallen back into the arms of their friends, eyes rolled back in their heads, panting and sweating from over exertion. The helpers laid each woman down on a couch surrounded by pillows, and began fanning her with their hands. One woman produced a carton of libn (my favorite) from the kitchen and began pouring it into Siham’s open mouth, though only a small portion of it actually went down. All I could think was - WTF?

I later heard that this form of ‘trance dancing’ is common at Gnawa music festivals and private events, and is, at least in part, their reason for existence. The passed down explanation I received says that there are 3 female demons in this strain of Sufi mysticism, and each one is represented by a color: red, blue or yellow. The hostess of a Gnawa ‘party’, or ritual, wears the color of the demon they are aiming to exorcise (for lack of a better term). Trance dancing is a medium for the release of that demon from the woman’s body.

Part of me did have to wonder if this ritual achieved the same affect that non-Muslim, or at least non-religious Muslims, get from drinking or taking part in other drugs. But my main concluding feeling was awe at the depth of this culture. If only so much meaning were attached to Bieber fever.