I want to document a little my intentions or hopes for what I might be able to contribute and learn from this week’s festival of Gnaoua music in Asilah Morocco. I should have written this before but here we are. I arrived in Asilah yesterday afternoon with some time to acclimatise and adjust to a different pace of life and a constant flow of musicians and languages. 

I will of course be delighted to share my music with audiences and to contribute to the various ensembles which will gather throughout the week to improvise together. but there’s more to music than the stage. As a research project this opportunity offers me two specific avenues above and beyond documenting the musical activities in audio, images and film. 
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The first is a close-up appreciation of individual musicians, specifically musicians dedicated to Gnaoua music and most likely string players, based on the simple fact that I know almost nothing about this music apart from what I’ve gathered from the internet. I would like to find out about their background, their understanding of music generally and their chosen musical practice, the instruments, the organology, the technical aspects of playing their instruments, the scordatura, notions of melody and rhythm.
The second is an understanding of how a tradition comes to be established and disseminated, its history and evolution, how the tradition is passed on to new generations, and most importantly for me, how the tradition might coalesce with other musical traditions and hybrids like my own. 

Finally in keeping with the food or menu analogy here’s a picture from the local supermarket.