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

Hot on the heels of their collaboration with the French dance-music duo Synapson, Bab L' Bluz release a new remix of 'Gnawa Beat', the opening track of their debut album ‘Nayda!’

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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Featured Release

  • Nayda!

    Bab L’ Bluz

    Released 05 June 2020

    Moroccan-French power quartet, Bab L’ Bluz, reclaim the blues for North Africa. Fronted by an African-Moroccan woman in a traditionally male role, Bab L’ Bluz are devoted to a revolution in attitude which dovetails with Morocco’s ‘nayda’ youth movement – a new wave of artists and musicians taking their cues from local heritage, singing words of freedom in the Moroccan-Arabic dialect of darija.

By Online Editor

Published on Fri, 21 January 22

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