Saha Gnawa

Maâlem Hassan Ben Jaafar was born to play gnawa. He was raised, after all, in Fes, Morocco’s cultural epicenter, by a gnawa master who even started a community space where people could study, share, and hear the music. He traveled across the country, absorbing every variant of the so-called Sufi blues, and earning the all-important Maâlem honorific when he was still a teenager. But then Jaafar became an international emissary for his country’s sound by relocating to New York in 1999 to lead a gnawa band there. By day, he held odd jobs while, at night, he played anywhere that would have this sound. After 15 years in New York, he co-founded Innov Gnawa, a Grammy-nominated trio that helped broaden awareness of this intoxicating and ecstatic music stateside.

Jaafar’s new band, Saha Gnawa, is the next logical step for a musician whose lifelong mission has been to proselytize for his heritage. His traditional bona fides irrefutable, he built the band with drummer Daniel Freedman, whose credits stretch from Anat Cohen to David Byrne. Pairing a frontline of singers playing qraqeb with Jason Linder’s expansive synthesizers and incisive electric guitar, Saha Gnawa is a vehicle for pushing gnawa into new spaces, for bringing it into conversation with other elements and champions of entrancing psychedelia. To wit, the band’s self-titled 2025 debut features Nels Cline and Donny McCaslin, both suggestions of just how much space Saha Gnawa has to explore.