Words by Justin Turford
For their third album (and first for the mighty BBE) Ben Brown and the Waaju boys have followed up on their startling 2021 ‘Live EP’ for Olindo Records with another brilliant live recording, this time recorded mainly at the atmospheric Church Of Sound in East London and most importantly, alongside a musical collaborator of exceptional talent: the Moroccan Gnawa master Majid Bekkas.
One of the most important Gnawa musicians of recent times, Majid has collaborated with jazz giants such as Pharoah Sanders, Archie Shepp and Peter Brotzmann in the past and for his first ever visit to the UK, he couldn’t have chosen a more empathetic UK band to collude with. Always busy, the members of Waaju have perhaps not had as much time together as they would like due to their in demand talents, band members play with Mulatu Astatke, Alfa Mist, Loyle Carner, Jordan Rakei, José James, Ashley Henry, Nubiyan Twist amongst many others but when they get in a room together they produce a potent symbiotic magic.
Influenced by a myriad of global influences including Malian blues guitar, Afro-Latin rhythms, funk and plenty of jazz flavours, when they’re in full flow, Waaju slot together as though they are a singular organism with a rare fluidity to their groove. On both of their studio albums ‘Waaju’ and ‘Grown’, and especially on the live version of ‘Listening Glasses’ on the aforementioned EP, we can hear the striking connection that they are capable of, the zone of musical communication that every band seeks, they have in spades.
Waaju and Majid Bekkas at Church Of Sound
No stranger to the instantly recognisable sonic world of Gnawa music with the funky, evocative bass tone of the three-stringed guembri (الكمبري) at its centre and the ritualistic clapping and heavy percussion of the heavy iron castanets known as qraqab, Ben’s new arrangements of these traditional Gnawa songs are like a guidebook to how to do global fusion with respect and courage in equal measure. Majid’s guembri remains but the rest of the instrumentation on this performance comprises of a modern drum kit, congas and assorted percussion, electric guitar and bass and tenor saxophone which in Waaju’s hands, lends a fresh and dynamic new tonality and flux to the sound.
Central to Gnawa music is repetition and a journey into a trance like state, the music made up of a repeated phrase or a few simple lines that become a hypnotic foundation for the vocalists chants which are different chants to the different spirits (mlouk), a long song actually comprised of several suites. The album title ‘Alouane’ translates as ‘Colours’ and the music will always contain one of the seven colours that relate to the seven spirits. Another essential Gnawa fusion record is 1994’s ‘The Trance of Seven Colors’ by Gnawa master musician Mahmoud Guinia and Pharoah Sanders, an unbelievably intense album of traditional Gnawa rhythms and mesmeric phrasing alongside the searching free lines of Sanders’ saxophone.
This live album is quite different however. The looping relentless surge of traditional Gnawa music is present but there is also a wide-panning expansiveness to the new arrangements, born of the granular traces of different genres that sit seemingly effortlessly together but could only have come from this particular collaboration.
‘Barma Soussani’ kicks the proceedings off with angular halftime drums, an enormously powerful vocal from Majid and plenty of moments of instrumental interplay, between voice and saxophone, bass and guembri, the acid-tinged desert blues of the electric guitar a constant hive of distorted expression, the whole piece growing and oscillating in its circular trance.
‘Fangara’ takes similar strides with Ben’s complex, tilting drums, a superb ghembri line and lots of call and response from the ensemble before falling into a sunbaked drop that is all sand dune heat, reaching psychedelic guitar that hits Santana-like energy before lifting up again into a monster groove all the way until the end. Trippy and transcendental you must listen to these songs in full, the radio edits really don’t do them justice!
Majid’s solo turn on the stripped down ‘Lando’ is a remarkable blues. Just a tuneful buzzing thumb piano (kalimba? mbira?) and his passionate yearning voice that reveals Gnawa’s original West African roots, a Senegalese Baaba Maal-esque flavour to his voicing and melodies on this beautiful song.
The slow-burning intro to ‘Bala Moussa’ cloaks the later intensity that sees the band reach full prog-dub-jazz freakout. A thumping 4/4 kick drum, fizzing electric guitar, Majid’s soaring voice and some great sax work, this performance would blow holes in a festival audience. After an epic drum solo, the band explodes back into action, Majid’s voice in a harmonious dance with the sax and tightly knitted guitar/bass/guembri riffing. Epic.
‘Hommage Aux Ancêtres (Zid lmal)’ is, to my ears, the jazziest song on the record. The whole crew are now super loose-limbed, the confident and flowing interaction between the players a joy to hear. A dubbed out ode to the ancestors, the saxophone is the star here, a wonderfully moving and eloquent voice to rival Majid’s.
Congas, scrapes, scratches and delays form the introduction to the roaring ‘Bania’. Again, the afrobeat-jazz sax playing is superb but then what isn’t on this ridiculously funky number? The layers of drums and hand percussion and perfectly placed bass and guembri are in a rock solid pocket as the guitar tremelo’s and wah-wah’s into the sky. When the tempo ramps up, this is the band at their deadliest. The heightened applause at the end says it all.
The anthemic ‘Bossoyo’ is built around an intricate riff that everyone joins initially before countermelodies and a stunning bluesy vocal turn from Majid turns the performance into a beautiful feeling of communion. There’s jazz, there is blues, Gnawa, rock and even a trace of gospel in this song and performance. A Church of Sound indeed.
This amazing and most welcome live album concludes with ‘Maroc/Boulila (encore)’, ‘Maroc’ being an instrumental song that featured on their debut album in 2018, now with the addition of Majid’s ‘Boulila’ lyrics and some heavy castanet action as the Afro-Latin jazz groove digs deeper into itself, the sax floating and weaving.
‘Alouane’ is such a great record, a brilliantly captured moment of sonic elation and cultural co-operation in a performance space that encourages grand expressions and deep immersion. I really do wish that I was there. 9/10
Out now on BBE Records!
BUY HERE! https://waaju.bandcamp.com/album/alouane