BEST OF UNIVERSITY OF GNAWA (vinyl)

Description

10TH ANNIVERSARY ALBUM - BEST OF. After completing his literature studies, Aziz Sahmaoui arrived in Paris and co-founded one of the flagship groups of the 90s, a machine to scare away identitarian groups and border guards: the Orchestre National de Barbès! Two albums later, he joined one of the pioneers of cosmopolitan fusion, the pianist Joe Zawinul, formerly of Miles Davis and founder of Weather Report, who loved only one thing: bringing African virtuosos into his open-air ensemble. It was there, with Zawinul's Syndicate, that Aziz Sahmaoui met several instrumentalists destined to form University of Gnawa with him, which, since 2010, has constantly unraveled what the "world music" label had constructed: a breviary of folklorized identities for the North. University of Gnawa, with its Senegalese, French, North Africans, and musicians of no fixed origin, deploys a music whose trance is the ferment. In this adventure, there is a reconciliation, and University of Gnawa shows what inevitably brings together the rhythmic genius of the Africas both above and below the Sahara. "Remarkable men in an activity, in a moral and inner attitude, are said to be magnificent. Those before us belong to that caste." --- JAZZ MAGAZINE --- "Poetic Trance, striking voices, a radiant fusion of African strings and rhythms, interwoven with urban sounds." --- LE MONDE ---