Spirit work
The Gnawa lila
The all-night Gnawa healing ceremony of music, incense and colour, in honour of the spirits called mluk.
Presented by ClearTrust Customs described as customs, free to read.
A lila, meaning night in Arabic, is the healing ceremony of the Gnawa, a Moroccan brotherhood whose forebears were brought from West Africa and the Sahel as slaves. It is held in a home or a shrine, often for a person who feels unwell in a way thought to come from the spirits. A master of the music, a maalem, leads a band with a three-stringed bass lute called the guembri and iron castanets called qraqeb.
This is an outline of a custom, said as belief and practice. It is not instruction, it does not say that the rite works, and it is not medical advice.
What goes into it
- GuembriToolThe three-stringed bass lute.
- QraqebToolIron castanets that mark the rhythm.
- IncenseSubstanceA different one for each spirit.
- Coloured clothsObjectWaved and worn at the dance.
- Songs to Sidi Bilal and the mlukWordSung through the night.
- Shrine or houseSpaceWhere the lila is held.
- Tool
- Substance
- Object
- Word
- Space
Each part has an equal wedge. The ring shows what goes into the rite, not how much. Colour is the part's role.
The steps, drawn
Each drawing shows the kind of act in that step. Details differ from place to place, family to family and practitioner to practitioner.
Step 1: Gather The family invites the maalem and musicians to the house. Step 2: Light Candles and incense open the night. Step 3: Offer Offerings are set out for the spirits and, in some lilas, an animal is offered. Step 4: Circle Music and dance move through the spirits one by one. Step 5: Read Those in trance receive the cloth and the spirit's attention. Step 6: Close At dawn the music ends and a meal is shared.
The spirits and their colours
The night passes through a suite of spirits, the mluk, each linked with a colour, an incense and a rhythm, such as white for Sidi Bilal's family, red for the fiery ones and blue for the water. Dancers wearing a coloured cloth enter trance at their spirit's rhythm, and a woman leader, the mqaddema, may guide them. In some lilas an animal is offered at the start, and this is factually part of the tradition as described by its members.
Standing today
The Gnawa have long been viewed with some suspicion by orthodox Muslims, but they claim the Muslim saint Sidi Bilal, the Prophet's muezzin, as their patron. The Gnaoua World Music Festival in Essaouira, begun in 1998, brought them an international stage, and UNESCO inscribed the Gnawa tradition in 2019. Some members say the festival version, a concert, is not a lila and does not carry the same purpose.
What it is for
- Honour the spirits
- Seek relief from distress said to come from them
Who does it
Related entries
Also part of it, and being written: Gnawa (The brotherhood.), Bilal ibn Rabah (The patron of the Gnawa.).
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Sources and further reading
Original text and drawings by the EveryJaadu desk, written with AI assistance and checked against the sources above. Closed or sacred detail is left out. If we have something wrong, tell us.
Photo credits on this page
The small pictures above come from Wikimedia Commons under free licences. Some are cropped to fit.
- Gnawa music: Lucyin, CC BY-SA 4.0, source