Hassan Hakmoun’s healing music
by Seth Rogovoy

(WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass., Nov 1, 1998) -- For Hassan Hakmoun to present traditional Gnawan music in its most authentic format, he would have to fly in his parents and siblings from Morocco and hire another handful of musicians so that there would be over a dozen people on stage, singing, playing and dancing for about 20 hours.

That’s about how long the Gnawan trance ceremony lasts. Of course, it usually takes place not on a concert stage but in the field, at the home of the people in need of its healing properties. Through the trances it induces, the music is said to be a medium through which spirits -- good or bad -- pass. The musicians, in this case, are both performers and healers -- musical psychotherapists, if you will.

Short of transferring a Moroccan village to America or flying an audience to Marrakech, Hassan Hakmoun has carved out a middle ground whereby he is able to present to audiences around the world a semblance of the ceremonial rites he has been performing since he was seven years old. He will be doing just this tomorrow night, Saturday, Nov. 7, at the Clark Art Institute, when he presents his “Life Around the World” program in the museum’s auditorium at 8. The concert is the second and final show of the Clark’s “Encore” series, bringing back performers from last winter’s popular world-folk series, in which Hakmoun appeared with the African Troubadours. For tickets and information call 458-2303, ext. 324.

“The concert gives a piece of what it is all about to the audience,” said Hakmoun speaking about the relationship between his live shows and the Gnawan healing ceremonies from which they draw, in a recent phone interview from his apartment in Brooklyn, where he has lived for the past 14 years.

“We’ve done performances at concert halls with my family and Moroccan musicians -- 15 or 16 people on stage at a time,” he said. “But with a two-hour performance, it’s never enough to show the people the entire ceremony, which takes 15 to 20 hours. But I arrange the performance the best I can to present the parts of all the spiritual aspects.”

Born in Marrakech in 1963, Hakmoun comes from a family of shuwafas, or healers, who use music as part of their ancient trance ritual. At the age of seven, he began to play the sintir, a three-stringed, long-necked lute -- a precursor to the American banjo -- which is a key proponent of the derdeba, or Gnawan healing ceremony. He soon began travelling and performing in public, singing, drumming, playing sintir and performing a highly acrobatic style of dancing, and working as a m’allem, or spiritual leader.

After travelling through Europe, Hakmoun made his U.S. concert debut in 1987 at Lincoln Center. Since then he has performed at Woodstock ’94 and on Peter Gabriel’s traveling world-music extravaganza, WOMAD. His TV appearances have included “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno” and “Night Music with David Sanborn.” He has several recordings to his credit on labels including Flying Fish, Real World, Knitting Factory and Alula, and his albums regularly top the World Music charts. He also performs with Zahar, his cutting-edge group that fuses traditional Gnawan music with jazz, reggae and funk music.

At the Clark, Hakmoun will emphasize more traditional styles, albeit with some American influences. He will be accompanied by his brother, Abderrahim Hakmoun, who also plays sintir, as well as percussionist Ron McBee and keyboardist Jamshied Sharifi.

In spite of the many miles and the cultural divide that separates Hakmoun and his Gnawan music from their native soil, when he plays that music, it still retains its spiritual quality.

“For me, I’m always trancing when I perform,” he said. “When I work with my family especially, it’s like we’re connected. When I play a song and jump to another one we’re all locked together, always there. When we work with other musicians not related to Gnawan music there are arrangements. But working with Jamshied, the keyboard player, it’s unbelievable. He’s a very talented musician who always follows the voice and adds some beautiful style of his own into the music.”

Given how so much of American music claims African roots, it’s not surprising that many listeners find its infectious, hypnotic qualities somewhat familiar. For Hakmoun, the reverse is also true. “I find blues and jazz related to Gnawan, and some funk styles,” he said. “You’ll hear it in my performance, some funky lines, and when we play with drums, keyboards and guitar you can hear it even more.”

Other musicians have been drawn to Hakmoun’s music enough to collaborate with him, including Peter Gabriel, Stevie Wonder, Neneh Cherry, Paula Cole and the late Don Cherry. Hakmoun has even composed a song for the Kronos Quartet. “I work in all different styles, with classical musicians, with lots of different styles of musicians around the world,” he said. “I’ve never had a hard time sitting in with my voice and instrument.”

As much as his music and career have opened up opportunities for him outside of his native tradition, Hakmoun says he has never grown tired of the creative possibilities inherent in that tradition. “What I like about my style is it’s never boring,” he said. “Any time I perform I have different musicians, different instrumentation, the music always changes. If I work with a Spanish guitar player, my melodies will change and the performance will have different flavors. Sometimes I go to a jazz festival with jazz musicians, or reggae. Many times I’ve had offers from record companies to do a reggae album, but I perform my own style of reggae.”

Hakmoun says the timing could not have been better for him to bring his unique style of music to Western ears in terms of awareness of and openness to indigenous, ethnic musics. “I think it’s getting much better than it was ten years ago, because of the help of Peter Gabriel,” he said. “He’s done so much for world music artists from all over, helping people like Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Youssou N’Dour, Papa Wemba, without taking advantage of other musicians, and presenting them like equal stars. I really admire him for that.”

Hakmoun also sees a growing market for world music in the motion picture industry. “Hollywood is very interested in using music from all over the world,” he said, “because it doesn’t have to be English lyrics to deliver your message on film. It could be a foreign language, and you can understand that person -- you understand the feeling -- which is better than understanding the lyrics.”

“When you feel something you don’t understand it’s more powerful,” adds Hakmoun, pretty much summing up his music’s appeal to audiences which couldn ’t be farther removed from that music’s origins.

[This article originally appeared in the Berkshire Eagle on Nov 06, 1998. Copyright Seth Rogovoy 1998. All rights reserved.]