Transes

The group's "Trances" are our equivalent of "soul music", our irrationality. I followed the example of the Nass El Ghiwane themselves: I went back to the roots. They draw their music from the last thousand years of Moroccan and African history. the film sets out to reveal and emphasize this heritage. I chose the music of the Saharan brotherhood, The Gnawas, and the verses of the famous poet El Mejdoub, to underline the trances. Ahmed El Maanouni’s 1981 documentary records concerts, interviews and behind-the-scenes glimpses of the pioneering group, Nass El Ghiwan, who were credited as an inspiration for his Last Temptation of Christ and have been famously described by Martin Scorsese as ‘the Rolling Stones of North Africa’. Nass El Ghiwan emerged from the impoverished city limits of Casablanca, combining elements of traditional Moroccan music – Sufi chants, Berber rhythms and the mystical dances of the Gnawa – to create a sound all of their own, introducing a new generation of North Africans to their roots, and the rest of the world, to a musical revolution. The film has been restored by the Cineteca di Bologna. “It was in 1981 while I was editing a film, The King of Comedy. We worked at night so no one would call us on the telephone and I would have television on, and one channel in New York at the time, around 2 or 3 in the morning, was showing a film called Trances. It repeated all night and it repeated many nights. And it had commercials in it, but it didn’t matter. So I became passionate about this music that I heard and I saw also the way the film was made, the concert that was photographed and the effect of the music on the audience at the concert. I tracked down the music and eventually it became my inspiration for many of the designs and construction of my film The Last Temptation of Christ. The music was also the basis for Peter Gabriel’s music in the film. I would play the music for most of the musicians I knew, Robbie Robertson of The Band…What you see here is a mix of the poetry, the music and the theatre that goes way back to the roots of the Moroccan culture. And I think the group was singing damnation: their people, their beliefs, their sufferings and their prayers all came through their singing. And I think the film is beautifully made by Ahmed El Maanouni; it’s been an obsession of mine since 1981 and that is why we are inaugurating the Foundation with Trances.” —Martin Scorsese, May 2007