Moroccan vocalist and guimbri player Maalem Houssam Guinia is poised to make a huge splash with his third release Dead of Night; it’s available now on vinyl and digital from Hive Mind Records. Guinia specializes in Gnawa music, a dynamic style with a long history that can be traced back to the Royal Black Guard of Morocco. Guinia’s father Maalem Mahmoud Guinia was one of the most renowned masters of Gnawa music; with the release of Dead of Night, it’s clear as day the style is in good hands.
Maalem Houssam Guinia first rose to international prominence through a collaboration with the British electronic musician James Holden, the 12-inch EP “Three Live Takes” released in 2018 on Holden’s Border Community label. Previously, Holden and Floating Points had collaborated with Houssam’s father Maalem Mahmoud Guinia on another 12-inch EP, “Marhaba,” which came out in 2015, also on Border Community.
Maalem Mahmoud Guinia passed in 2015, leaving behind a wealth of recordings, the majority of them released in Morocco on cassette. His son’s discography is much smaller, at least apparently so; following “Three Live Takes,” there is Mosawi Swiri, released in 2019 on cassette and digital by Hive Mind, and now Dead of Night.
While Gnawa isn’t the most high profile of African styles, the healing ceremonial music is far from unknown outside of Morocco, in no small part due to Mahmoud Guinia’s body of work. His most famous release remains The Trance of Seven Colors, a live recording from 1994 captured in Essaouira, Morocco by Bill Laswell and issued on his Axiom label. It paired Mahmoud on guimbri with free jazz tenor sax titan Pharoah Sanders. The success of that recording surely inspired The Wels Concert with multi-horn man Peter Brötzmann and drummer Hamid Drake, which was released in 1997 on Okka Disk.
That Houssam Guinia made his international inroads with a similar live setting style merger isn’t surprising, but he’s wisely shifted gears since, first with Mosawi Swiri, which featured Houssam with a local backing group, and now with Dead of Night, where he’s recorded completely unaccompanied. It’s just guimbri and voice, and it’s as up close and intense as music gets.
Gnawa is a trance music, so it’s very much a consciousness grabbing (and altering) sort of thing, but Dead of Night further benefits from the deep intimacy of a home recording, extending the techniques of Alan Lomax and Sam Charters with vivid audio clarity that magnifies both the unique timbres of the guimbri, a three stringed skin-covered bass plucked lute, and not just Houssam’s singing, but his breathing, as well. Throughout, Dead of Night is resolutely human music, and it’s like sitting at Houssam’s feet all the way through, especially on headphones.
This “you are right there in the room” immediacy nixes any need for instrumental support and improvisational interactions, but the nature of guimbri is wide ranging. Along with its spillage of plucked tangles, when in the right hands, it possesses a raw percussive quality. Dead of Night makes it screamingly obvious that Maalem Houssam Guinia is a guimbri master.
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