Track of the day: ‘Gnawa Beat (Bayaka Remix)’ by Bab L’ Bluz

For this single ‘Gnawa Beat’ has been re-worked by Bayaka, the Italian DJs and producers famed for their work on releases for MoBlack Records and other celebrated Afro-House labels. In their hands the desert blues-infused original morphs into a pulsating, late night club work-out with an insistent bassline underpinning the trance-like melody and rattling percussion.

Bab L’ Bluz are no strangers to a hypnotic groove themselves, but things have been fully ratcheted-up here, while still keeping Yousra Mansour’s Darija vocal front and centre, as she sings “Welcome to the truth that can be told without fear.”

Led by Mansour, a doukkalia woman, Bab L’ Bluz are devoted to ideas of unity, to a revolution in attitude and to shaking up the status quo. Values that dovetail with Morocco’s “nayda” youth movement — a new wave of Moroccan artists and musicians taking their cues from local heritage, singing words of freedom in the Moroccan-Arabic dialect of Darija (“nayda” means both “to rise up” and “to party”) and mixing influences at will.

Gnawa Beat (Bayaka Remix) by Bab L’ Bluz is available to hear on a dance floor near you and via all digital platforms.

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