I had the honor to have tea with him the other day. Laraby spent the majority of his life with the greatest Gnawa ma'alemin and musicians of Morocco although he no longer attends Gnawa lilas or really has much to do with Gnawa anymore.
It was also a pleasure to meet Laraby because I had heard about him before, only I didn't know his name. Hassan had told me a story about him when he was still young and that story even wound up in my 34-page paper I wrote on the Gnawa last year: when Hassan was still new to Gnawa music and was working at the Artisana Cooperative one day, he began to sing a spiritual Gnawa song. Laraby, who happened to be there at the time, told him to “skut!” or basically, “shut up!” because those songs were not meant to be sung outside of the lila. That day and age passed a long time ago and now, these sacred spiritual songs are sung in public, on CDs, and at festivals but back then, they were reserved for the sacred settings.
Hassan and I made an appointment to speak with Laraby and recounted this story to him. He indeed remembered it and chuckled, responding, “I really only said that to protect myself because had Hassan continued singing that song, I would have fallen into trance.”
Laraby stopped particpating in Gnawa lila quite awhile ago. He said that the “real” lilas are long gone and he can no longer go to lilas, seeing how much it has changed, and how the respect has been lost. He echoed what another ma'alem recently said, “The real masters have left (died). The real tagnawit is gone. Now, it is just music, there is no more tagnawit (trance).”
Truthfully, it was a bit sad to hear him recount how the Gnawa were in those days, what the music was like, and especially what the ceremonies were like. As many as 20 years ago, the change started taking place. It really made me wish I had found this music long, long ago or been born 20 years earlier.
Laraby has known Hassan for a long time and was friends with his late father so there is quite a history there. Hassan ended up interpreting for me, which was kind of comical considering that my French is actually better than his at this point. However, I recorded the entire conversation so that I can have someone later help me translate the dialect. I understood a great deal but some of the details are lacking.
I asked questions about trance. I explained some of the experiences I have had and asked what that was all about. “If the real trance is gone, what am I experiencing?” Laraby clarified that trance still exists, but the real masters who knew the trance, who knew how to give and work it, are gone. There are only a few masters left living. Those masters still living are the few ma'alemin with whom one can experience trance and, interestingly, one of those two ma'alemin he mentioned is indeed the ma'alem with whom I experienced my greatest, “supernatural,” if you will, trance experience; or in other words, the deepest and most profound trance. The other one is in Marrakech and I have been in phone contact to have an interview with him.
Laraby spent 2.5 hours with us. He really had a way of boiling down Gnawa to its purest core, most of which, he said, has long past and is no longer with us in Morocco. For all my detailed questions, there was an overall sense of, “But that's not really what Gnawa is about...” and somehow, I felt like I was absorbing information nonverbally.
Although I left feeling a little sad like the real Gnawa is no longer there for me to experience, I also realize that I just have to go with what I have in front of me and make the most of it. Every age will say that “the good ol' days were better.” It also sent a pang through my heart to think of this dear 74-year old man working a night shift as a guardian but at the same time, he seems content.
When it was time to go, Hassan gave him the traditional greeting for elders, something I love seeing and have a great deal of respect for: he took Laraby into one of his arms, holding his head with the other arm, and kissed the old man on the forehead. I shook his hand and inside the palm of my hand, passed a “baraka” or blessing of money, what is often a day's wage here, about $10.
