ASMAA HAMZAOUI & BNAT TIMBOUKTOU + SENI REAK JUARTA PUTRA
15/11/2024
Doors: 20:00 // Entrance: 120 DKK
This evening offers two powerful and transcendent concert experiences, providing you with a unique insight into the ritual Gnawa music from Morocco with Asmaa Hamzaoui & Bnat Timbouktou, and the trance ritual Reak from Indonesia with the group Seni Reak Juarta Putra.
PROGRAM
➤ Doors open: 20:00
➤ Asmaa Hamzaoui & Bnat Timbouktou: 20:30
➤ Seni Reak Juarta Putra: 22:00
ASMAA HAMZAOUI & BNAT TIMBOUKTOU
Asmaa Hamzaoui is the foremost female ambassador of Gnawa music. With her group Bnat Timbouktou, she delivers a contagious brand of evangelistic desert blues.
Even though women are essential to Gnawa rituals, there has not been many female Gnawa musicians. Asmâa Hamzaoui and the group Bnat Timboktou are part of a new wave who changes this trend. Hamzaoui was born into a Casablanca family who has lived and breathed Gnawa - her father is a master musician, her mother a dancer. She was taught the guembri as a child, and at an early age, she joined her fathers band on qraqeb and choir, before he encouraged her to start her own group. That became Bnat Timboktou, the band who in late spring will release “L ́bnat” the follow up to the critically acclaimed debut album “Oulad Ighaba” on the Swedish label ajabu! Records.
“To us, Gnawa stands above all other kinds of music. It’s our childhood. It’s spiritual, healing, and it makes you feel grounded.”
When this group of women performs, the guembri - a plucked lute played in a percussive style - and Asmaa Hamzaoui’s expressive voice are the centrepiece, while the soundscape is filled with the rhythmic percussion of qraqeb, so characteristic of Gnawa music.
SENI REAK JUARTA PUTRA
Seni Reak Juarta Putra – an original community of the Reak ceremoni. Based in village Cileuiny on the mountain areas surrounding Bandung, West Java.
The musical style is called Reak, and is one the original trance rituals that has been existing in Javafor centuries. The spirit of the Horse (Kuda Lumping) and the spirits of the the ancestors have acentral role in this ceremoni. In Java it is performed for communal needs, and villagers gather in the houndreds, to be possesed and be connected to the spirits through the music and dance. Reak, when peoples get possesed – is known for an outcome to the very extremes.
The musicians of Seni Reak Juarta Putra is a select group out of the community. The music is performed on skin drums (Dogdog) and special reed flute (Tarompet). There will be an exchanging of the instruments as the musicians perform the dances and start going into trance themselves. The Audience is invited to be part of the ritual and participate to the fullest.