Lila – A nightlong musical ritual

Lila. Night. The core of what Gnawa emerged from – not a form of theatre, not a concert, but a ritual that lasts from sunset to sunrise and in which music, trance, and healing become a single movement. Closing this year's HKW Sonic Pluriverse festival at SAVVY with an authentic lila is the only possible gesture: all that went before – the concerts, the films, the panels, the encounters with Yoruba, Candomblé, tarantella, flamenco, desert blues – culminates in the form from which Gnawa derives its life force when it’s at home.

For six hours, from nocturnal darkness to the light of dawn, Maalem Mustapha Sam from Marrakesh and his troupe will lead the ritual through its strictly coded sequence: the guembri opens up the "path", the qraqeb jangle in a tireless pulse, the invocations of the mluk follow with their seven assigned colours, scents, and rhythms, until the circle closes at first light. Mustapha Sam, known in the Gnawa world of Marrakesh as "Sam Sghir" – the younger Sam – belongs to a generation of maalems whose authority derives not from recording contracts or festival biographies but from knowledge passed on from hand to hand, from string to string, from lila to lila. The fact that little information is available about him online reflects his importance. He will lead the ritual with Mqaddma Souad from Marrakesh, the director of the ceremony – the female authority who guards the spiritual unfolding of the night, defining the sequence of scents, colours, and fabrics, and maintaining contact with the mluk.

It is no coincidence that the lila is taking place at SAVVY Contemporary in Berlin’s Wedding district – a place that has for years been dedicated to varied forms of knowledge and Afro-diasporic viewpoints, in a neighbourhood marked by migration. In this way, rather than ending with a final event, the festival transitions to its original form – rather that concluding the programme, the six-hour lila is the base on which the entire festival rests.

// Collaboration & Support The event takes place in the framework of this year's Sonic Pluriverse Festival edition "Global Echoes of Gnawa" by Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin.

// PHOTO Film still from La Nuit de la Possession – La Lila de Derdeba, by Frank Cassenti (2011)