Living and Perceived: Depictions of Gnawa Culture in American Literature
Open Access
- Author:
- Landmesser, Samantha
- Area of Honors:
- Comparative Literature
- Degree:
- Bachelor of Humanities
- Document Type:
- Thesis
- Thesis Supervisors:
- Anna Ziajka Stanton, Thesis Supervisor
Nergis Erturk, Thesis Honors Advisor - Keywords:
- Gnawa
Morocco
representation
travel writing - Abstract:
- The Gnawa are an ethno-cultural African diasporic group particular to Morocco. They are known for their spiritual and healing music rituals, which are a larger part of their unique practice of Sufi Islam. Their music often invokes a spiritual communion with a shared history of ancestral slavery and displacement, for example, in revering the Sufi saint, Bilal al-Habashi, or Sidi Bilal, who was an Ethiopian slave freed by the Prophet Muhammad according to canonical accounts. In this paper, I examine (mis)representations of the Gnawa in American writing. Firstly, I start with Elizabeth Fernea’s travel memoir A Street in Marrakech and Joydeep Roy-Bhattacharya’s novel The Storyteller of Marrakesh. These two texts depict the Gnawa within an Orientalist framework and are situated within a larger tradition of American tourism to Marrakesh. Secondly, I discuss Randy Weston’s memoir African Rhythms which outlines his lifelong musical relationship with the Gnawa. In this section I look at Gnawa music in relation to African American music styles such as jazz and blues. Lastly, I analyze Charif Shanahan’s poetry collection Into Each Room We Enter Without Knowing and his representation of the Gnawa as a symbol of global Blackness. These representations offer new insights on how the Gnawa are perceived in the American literary imaginary.