Bab L’ Bluz, the Marrakesh Gnawa rock group, played their first ever Montreal show during Nuit D’afrique like they were summoning something older than any of us. Under the sprawl of Scene TD, the air was dense with heat, and the band’s Moroccan gnawa trance-rock felt less like a performance and more like a rite.
The guembri’s thick, rubbery basslines threaded through the air like low-flying drones, while Yousra Mansour stood in the centre—voice sharpened with reverence and defiance, curls haloed in sweat. She sang and wailed in Darija, the Moroccan Arabic, each phrase riding the deep pulse of percussion and fuzzed-out electric riffs, her double-necked guembri slung like an electric talisman. Even if I didn’t know the words, the urgency was unmistakable: liberation, history, the slow unfurling of a people’s soul music braided on stage. There were some absolute rhythmic bangers in songs like “AmmA,” and others from their 2024 album, Swaken.
At one point, Mansour raised her hands mid-song as if conducting spirits. The band surged louder, gnawa rhythms clashing with desert blues and wah-pedal grit, making the tent feel too small for whatever force was churning inside. Mansour absolutely rips on the geumbri, playing it like a slide guitar without a slide. We have to give props to the bass guembri/ backing vocalist Brice Bottin, drummer Ibrahim Terkemani, and percussionist, Mehdi Chaïb.
By the time the set closed, the night air felt different, like it had been stirred by something heavy and ecstatic. Bab L’ Bluz had cracked something open.
