Castanet Connections with Innov Gnawa

Sep 01, 2015 @ 7:00pm

A Moroccan band that originally settled in the Bronx, Innov Gnawa, will provide trance-like music played with a variety of instruments including metal castanets. Their performance will follow a set of flamenco castanet-accompanied songs featuring renowned Bronx dancer, Nelida Tirado.
Castanets
We celebrate our West African heritage in the rhythms of the African diasporic music that makes up the backbone of much of the music we hear in the Bronx, whether it is African-American jazz, funk, and blues, Cuban rumba, Puerto Ri- can bomba, Garifuna punta, or Dominican palos. But our music has a North African influence as well, which we see in the Middle Eastern frame drums which are part of the repertoire of the plena from Puerto Rico or the Brazilian samba. The North African legacy is also reflected in other percussive instruments and vocal styles that are retained in the Spanish flamenco tradition and which were transmitted to the Western Hemisphere. The melisma vocal style used by flamenco singers can be detected in the diana (wordless vocalese intro) that opens the Cuban rumba. Puerto Rican poet Victor Hernández Cruz has posited the idea of the connection between Arabic singing and vocals in Puerto Rican jibaro music (from the island’s countryside) in his book, Red Beans, by comparing two lyrical compositions:
“The Prophet of Islam has said, ‘Say la ilaha illa Llah and be delivered.’” —Seyyed Hossein Nasr
“ay lo lay lah lo lay la ley lo lay lah” —Ramito, trovador from Puerto Rico
In fact, the most commonly used verse form in la música jíbara (and in poetic forms throughout Latin America) originated in 1591 in Spain with the publication of the poetry collection, Diversas rimas, by the court poet Vicente Espinel. He codified the form (ten lines of eight syllables each) which had been in Al- Andalus (Andalusia) since the 11th and 12th centuries, practiced by the Mozar- ab (Ibero-Christian) community, who while living under Moorish rule had adopted elements of Arabic language and culture. North African percussion has also left a lasting legacy in Spain with castanets, which are a type of clapper. They are the first musical instrument recorded in Egyptian source, where they had a religious significance as they were used by women who were called ‘glorifiers of the goddess Hathor.” Clapper instruments developed along parallel lines in parts of Asia and in Greece, where they were known as krotalon (krotos means “pulse”). In Greece they also took on religious meanings as there is a hymn to the goddess Diana which says, “My comrade strikes with nimble hand the well-gilt, brazen sounding castanet.”1 In Spain castanets are first mentioned in the writings by the Roman writer Martial, who describes women in Gades (Cadiz) playing castanets and dancing. Scholars consider these dancers as of Phoenician origin since Phoenicia traded throughout the Medi- terranean as early as the 11th century BCE when it was part of what is now modern-day Lebanon and Syria. In that region, castanets were used in honor of the goddess Cybele. In Spain, these instruments became known as castañuelas (the name derives from castaña which is chestnut wood, from which the instrument was most likely made; or due to their shape which resembles a large chestnut). St. Teresa of Ávila who founded the Carmelite convents in the 16th century was said to be skilled on the castanets and she would wake the nuns before sunrise with their sound. Castanets became part of Spanish folk and re- gional dances. In Aragon, castanets are tied to the middle finger in the jota dance. The castanets from the folk dances of Andalusia, such as the sevillanas from Sevilla, are worn on the thumb and rest in the palm. This right one is the macho (male) and plays the carretillas (rolls), while the left hand pair is hembra (female) and marks the rhythm. Flamenco in Andalusia has multiple influences but is essentially a Roma (gitano/Gypsy) tradition. Originally only handclapping (palmas) and finger-snapping (pitos) were used to accompany flamenco music but gradually castanets have become part of its repertoire.
In North Africa the Gnawa use metal castanets called karkaba. The Gnawa are a Sufi order in Morocco who identify themselves as descending from enslaved West Africans. Their music has become increasingly popular here because over the past two decades there has been a rise in immigration to the U.S. from North Africa. The music they perform has its origins in rituals to heal people possessed by jinn or spirits. This regional, subcultural music (in the 1930s this music was in opposition to the Moroccan elites who wanted to have the Andalusian— Islamic Iberian—classical repertoire represent the emerging country during the anticolonial movement) has become national music (much in the same way that flamenco has in Spain). Samir Langus of Innov Gnawa says, “It’s the music of the poor, the excluded who couldn’t afford to go to the big conservatories to study Andalusian poetry, their suffering is in rhythm.”2 The trance-inducing qualities of Gnawa music give it another link to flamenco. The music was related to the jinn (djinni or as they are popularly known genies) which originally were protective or guardian spirits that scholars call genius loci, or “spirits of a place.” In flamenco, when a performer shows great inspiration they are said to have duende. Duende originally was a term for a demon, goblin, or genius loci, but now refers to a type of Muse. The Spanish poet, Federico Garcia Lorca, wrote:
“The great artists of Southern Spain, Gypsy of flamenco, singers, dancers, musicians, know that emotion is impossible without the arrival of the ‘duende’ . . .The duende. . . Where is the duende? Through the empty archway a wind of the spirit enters, blowing insistently over the heads of the dead, in search of new landscapes and unknown ac- cents: a wind with the odour of. . . crushed grass and medusa’s veil, announcing the endless baptism of freshly created things.