Radio GnawaRadio Gnawa

Gnaoua came north with enslaved West Africans and survived in all-night healing ceremonies led by a maalem, a master musician who can hold a room until dawn. Nobody had built a Moroccan station around it until 2019, when this one started up in Inezgane, the market town beside Agadir, as radio and television at once. It has followed the circuit since — Essaouira, Taroudant, Izourane — recording sets that would otherwise exist only in the room they happened in, and in the memory of whoever stayed awake.

The repertoire runs from ceremonial recordings to the crossings: Gnaoua blues, fusion with jazz and funk, and the Ismkan rhythms particular to the Souss, with Amazigh music and contemporary Moroccan singers in the same rotation. Talk programmes and listener competitions fill the space between sets, and the same output carries on a TV channel and a phone app.