Guedra Guedra interview: “For me, digital music has turn into greater than only a style. It is a language.”

MUTANT visions

Guedra Guedra is Moroccan producer Abdellah M. Hassak, a part of a brand new technology of North African creatives concurrently plugged into the area’s historic traditions and the newest developments in international digital music.

Smugglers Way, an imprint of Domino, will launch Guedra Guedra’s second album MUTANT on August 29.  The album sees Abdellah mix analogue synths and drum machines with area recordings gathered whereas travelling throughout Morocco, Tanzania, Guinea and plenty of different nations, exploring themes of id, Pan-Africanism, Afrofuturism and decolonisation.

Needless to say, we just like the sound of all that, however what sealed the deal for us was not the speculation however the booming bass and crisp, infectious beats of the practise. So we put a number of inquiries to the person himself, simply to get to know him higher…

Hi thanks to your time….  First of all, are you able to inform us the place you might be proper now, and how much day you’re having…  Been anyplace already or going anyplace attention-grabbing later?

Hello! Right now, I’m in Marrakech, the place I stay and work. It’s a metropolis stuffed with inspiration, a singular place the place historic heritage meets vibrant up to date life. Today is a comparatively calm day for me within the studio. I’m engaged on preparations for my summer time tour and selling my newest album MUTANT. It’s not straightforward, there’s rather a lot to handle, however I really feel fortunate to be surrounded by an important staff that permits me to remain targeted on the artistic aspect and to share my music with the world.

I’m additionally placing the ultimate touches on a number of new tracks and preparing for an upcoming efficiency. Later this night, I’ll most likely attend a neighborhood occasion to catch some Moroccan artists stay, I like to remain linked to the scene and assist what’s taking place right here.

Tell us a bit about your formative musical experiences… Early musical reminiscences from siblings, mother and father, schoolmates…  First devices, embarrassing bands and many others  

I grew up in Casablanca, in a household the place music was all the time a part of every day life. At dwelling, my mother and father performed cassette tapes full of Moroccan in style music, all the things from chaâbi to classical Andalusian songs. Alongside that, I used to be uncovered to raï, funk, reggae, and afterward, hip-hop and rock, particularly by means of my older brother who sadly handed away a number of months in the past, and in addition by means of mates I had throughout that interval.

The streets of Casablanca had been a relentless supply of sonic inspiration. They had been alive with trance-based conventional music like Issawa, Jebala, Chaâbi, and Aita. This was the sort of music you’d hear throughout spiritual ceremonies, weddings, or just from road musicians performing within the neighborhoods. These sounds left a deep impression on me due to their highly effective repetition, collective rhythm, and the deep connection between music, ritual, and on a regular basis life.

Very early on, I started taking part in drums and bass guitar in highschool bands. We explored all the things from metallic and dub to reggae. It was loud, chaotic, and uncooked, but additionally extremely liberating. It taught me rather a lot about rhythm, vitality, and the way to talk by means of sound in a stay setting. That time felt like a private faculty of freedom. We weren’t following guidelines. We had been simply creating with ardour and urgency.

Eventually, I received my first laptop, and that marked an actual turning level. I began exploring music manufacturing software program and entered the world of digital music. But it wasn’t straightforward. Back then, entry to gear was restricted, and on-line sources had been scarce, particularly in Morocco. Despite these challenges, I started studying the way to construct total compositions alone. I layered sounds, formed area recordings, and experimented with new sonic textures. It felt like discovering a brand new sort of nomadic follow, one which allowed me to journey by means of sound, tradition, reminiscence, and creativeness from my small dwelling studio.

For me, digital music has turn into greater than only a style. It is a language. One that’s each deeply private and radically international. It helps me bridge ancestral reminiscence with future prospects.

And inform us about your journey into the music you make as we speak – what had been the necessary steps? 

The actual turning level in my musical journey occurred after I joined an engineering faculty. Until then, I had been very lively in taking part in stay music with bands, principally drums and bass guitar. But as soon as I started my research, I didn’t have the time or flexibility to maintain up with common rehearsals. That’s after I turned towards dwelling manufacturing, which fully reworked my artistic course of.

I put in my first digital audio software program and started experimenting with fundamental instruments. I began working with dub, ambient textures, and experimental music. These genres opened up a world of freedom that was completely completely different from taking part in in a band. I spotted that I might create full compositions alone, layering rhythms, melodies, samples, and results. It was like opening a door to a different dimension. I might now mix all of the influences I had gathered,  conventional Moroccan and African music, road sounds, digital textures, into one thing fully new and private.

That interval laid the muse for my inventive id. I started to grasp sound not solely as leisure, however as an area for storytelling, reminiscence, and resistance. The extra I explored area recordings, polyrhythms, and sound archives, the extra I felt the necessity to strategy music with a transparent function.

Eventually, this led to the start of the Guedra Guedra undertaking. From the start, the concept was to create a sonic area the place African rhythmic traditions may very well be re-centered, not as background taste or ornament, however because the core construction of the music. I wished to problem the way in which digital music typically treats non-Western sounds, to reverse the gaze and provides full company to those rhythms, voices, and textures.

Since then, I’ve been creating my very own path in digital music and sound artwork. It’s been a protracted and evolving journey that has introduced me to completely different nations and allowed me to share my work internationally, whereas staying deeply linked to my heritage. I additionally expanded my focus into area recording and sound archiving, exploring how sound can carry reminiscence and mirror energy buildings.

My mission with Guedra Guedra turned clear: to decolonize sound, to have a good time African complexity and futurism, and to make use of expertise to not erase custom, however to increase it. Every observe I make is a sort of time-travel, a bridge between ancestral reminiscence and future invention. It’s a means of honoring what got here earlier than, whereas imagining what comes subsequent.

Give us a fast summary of what you’ve launched up to now for the uninitiated…

Before launching Guedra Guedra, I had already been lively underneath completely different inventive identities. One of my earliest solo tasks was Dubosmium, lively between 2005 and 2009. It was a platform for exploring digital dub and ambient experimentalism infused with Moroccan sonic parts. During that point, I launched two albums: Horizontal Plane Polar Dub (2006) and Green Element (2008). These works had been formed by a DIY spirit and a robust connection to native soundscapes, mixing digital dub methods with samples coming from movie and records and meditative atmospheres. That part helped me develop an early vocabulary for working with low-end frequencies, delays, and sound system tradition, whereas reflecting on North African id by means of a deeply introspective and experimental lens.

In parallel, as Abdellah M. Hassak, I started working extra within the realm of sound artwork, radiophonic creation, and area recording. I explored how sound features as a medium for reminiscence, territory, and resistance, significantly within the post-colonial context of North Africa. These works had been much less about rhythm and extra about listening, about how sonic environments form our expertise of the world. This a part of my follow deeply knowledgeable the conceptual dimension of what would later turn into Guedra Guedra.

The Guedra Guedra undertaking started as a response to a private and political have to re-center African rhythmic traditions inside up to date digital music. My first launch underneath this title was the EP ‘Son of Sun’, which explored African percussive roots by means of a vibrant and high-energy digital strategy. It was each a love letter to African rhythm and an announcement about how these rhythms might converse a futuristic language with out dropping their essence.

That was adopted by my debut full-length album, Vexillology. The title itself refers back to the research of flags, symbols of id, borders, and belonging. This report questioned how we navigate advanced cultural legacies and nationwide identities by means of rhythm, voice, and sonic fragmentation. It was an try to rethink borders not by means of politics however by means of polyrhythm, to make audible the contradictions and entanglements of post-colonial identities.

Most lately, I introduced MUTANT, which is my most elaborate and immersive undertaking up to now. Built on years of area recording in Morocco, West Africa, and East Africa, it incorporates conventional chants, acoustic devices, and ritual rhythms, which I rework utilizing digital processes like glitch enhancing, granular synthesis, and deep bass design. MUTANT is each a membership report and a sonic archive. It is rooted in the concept that sound is rarely static, that it transforms, mutates, and carries with it the traces of motion, wrestle, and creativeness. The report options tracks like Tribes with Flags, with a spoken phrase efficiency by filmmaker Jihan El-Tahri, reflecting on Pan-Africanism and reminiscence.

Taken collectively, these tasks hint a private and inventive journey from introspective dub and sound documentary towards a sonic Afrofuturism that’s daring, rhythmic, and radically rooted. Each launch is a unique layer of that trajectory, from Dubosmium’s ambient experiments to Guedra Guedra’s political dancefloor.

Tell in regards to the title Guedra Guedra… What does it imply and the way does it relate to you and your music?  How did you come throughout digital music first?

The phrase Guedra refers to each a standard percussive instrument, a big earthenware jar, and a sacred Amazigh ritual dance practiced within the southern desert areas of Morocco. This dance, typically led by ladies, entails rhythmic hand clapping, chanting, and a religious trance-like state. For me, the time period Guedra symbolizes a deep and ancestral vibration, a strong connection between rhythm, the physique, reminiscence, and collective trance.

By naming the undertaking Guedra Guedra, I’m not simply referring to the custom itself, however doubling it, repeating the title as an echo or a loop. That repetition is symbolic of transformation. It’s my means of honoring the deep cultural roots whereas additionally signaling the sonic mutation I carry by means of digital music. It’s a means of acknowledging that one thing historic is being carried ahead into new areas, golf equipment, festivals, sound techniques, radio waves, with out dropping its essence.

My introduction to digital music didn’t come by means of formal coaching, however by means of experimentation. I’m a self-taught producer. I began by exploring dub and ambient music on early digital audio software program. At the identical time, I used to be amassing cassette tapes, vinyl records, and making area recordings of conventional Moroccan and African music. These two paths, digital experimentation and sonic archiving, finally merged.

Electronic music supplied me instruments not simply to compose, however to reinterpret, to remix reminiscence, to construct bridges between the ancestral and the futuristic. So Guedra Guedra is greater than a reputation, it’s a technique, a manifesto, and a sonic id that displays each the place I come from and the place I wish to go.

Tell us about Morocco and the music scene there… Are there many different musicians working in comparable musical areas?  Does the standard music you grew up with additionally play an element in your sound?

The music scene in Morocco is extremely vibrant and in fixed evolution. The previous few a long time have seen waves of experimentation and reinvention, significantly with regards to digital music. While the favored picture of Moroccan music typically focuses on conventional varieties like Gnawa, Aïta, or Andalusian classical music, there may be additionally a deep and wealthy historical past of digital innovation that goes again to the early Nineteen Eighties.

This motion was considerably formed by the pioneering label Barraka El Farnatshi, based by Swiss producer Pat Jabbar. He collaborated with Moroccan musicians to kind Aisha Kandisha’s Jarring Effects (AKJE), mixing dub, trance, home, and techno with Moroccan ceremonial and trance traditions. This hybrid sound, wild, uncooked, and deeply religious, pushed Moroccan music into new areas of worldwide recognition. Collaborations with worldwide icons like Bill Laswell, Bernie Worrell (from Funkadelic), and Umar Bin Hassan (The Last Poets) additional amplified this wave of innovation. These weren’t simply crossovers, they had been radical reimaginings of what Moroccan music may very well be.

In the identical period, tasks like U-Cef and MoMo (Music of Moroccan Origin) introduced the Moroccan underground into dialogue with drum’n’bass, breakbeat and dub, coining phrases like Digital and Roots (DaR) to explain this new sort of digital heritage. They had been among the many first to argue, by means of sound, that Moroccan music was not simply one thing to protect, it was one thing alive, mutable, and able to mutate.

These historic moments aren’t simply background for me, they’re a part of my inventive lineage. I see my very own work as a continuation of this spirit. When I launched Guedra Guedra, my intention wasn’t to “fuse” digital music with Moroccan sounds for aesthetic impact. It was about decolonizing sound, creating music that resists international homogenization, that speaks from inside African polyrhythms, and that imagines new sonic futures rooted in ancestral data.

Today, the Moroccan scene continues to develop. We have festivals like MOGA and Oasis, which combine international headliners with native expertise. Spaces like Kabana in Marrakech, the place I curate musical programming, function laboratories for sonic experimentation. Many youthful producers are actually turning to conventional rhythms like Houara, Ahwach, Issawa, and Gnawa as uncooked materials for his or her productions, not out of nostalgia, however to push these varieties ahead with synths, drum machines, and DAWs.

This is precisely what excites me: Morocco will not be a scene of imitation, it’s a scene of translation, of friction, of artistic stress. There are many artists working in comparable territories, like Cheb Runner, Retro Cassetta, Daox, Driss Bennis, Polyswitch, Saib, and others rather a lot and rather a lot, every with a unique tackle what it means to be digital and Moroccan as we speak.

Traditional music performs a central position in my sound, not as ornamentation, however as a basis. I work with area recordings, archival samples, and acoustic devices from completely different components of the African continent. These parts aren’t used as an example id, they’re the construction of my music. They’re the voice of reminiscence, of group, of spirit.

To me, Moroccan digital music will not be a pattern. It’s a cultural motion. It’s what occurs when the desert meets the dancefloor, when heritage collides with expertise, when rhythm turns into a technique of resistance. And we’re simply getting began.

Tell us about your particular music making setting… Does it affect the music you make?

I compose from my studio in Marrakech, which is greater than only a workspace, it’s a dwelling organism that displays my artistic id. The setting is hybrid, combining digital instruments like synths, samplers, and manufacturing software program with conventional devices, cassette tapes, vinyl records, and area recordings I’ve collected over time. I additionally embody on a regular basis sound objects, issues so simple as kitchen instruments or items of metallic, as a result of I see sound in every single place, not simply in devices.

Marrakech itself has a huge effect on how I create. The metropolis is intense, stuffed with contrasts. There’s sacred vitality within the name to prayer, uncooked rhythm within the markets, and spontaneous concord on the street distributors’ voices. My studio is open to these energies. I typically preserve the home windows open whereas working, letting the skin world bleed into my classes. The textures of the town, the voices, the birds, the visitors, turn into layers of the music I make.

But I additionally want moments of detachment, so I typically go away the town for artist residencies or area journeys, particularly in rural or desert areas. That’s the place I reconnect with nature, silence, and ancestral vibrations. These travels are important to my course of, as a result of they permit me to assemble new materials and return with a recent perspective. Many of my tracks begin from these collected sounds, a chant recorded throughout a competition, the wind hitting a rock, the heartbeat of a standard ceremony, and evolve into full compositions.

So sure, the area I create in, and the locations I cross by means of, completely form my sound. My studio is a sort of crossroads the place the previous meets the brand new, the native meets the worldwide, and the place reminiscence, creativeness, and experimentation coexist.

You’ve used area recordings from Morocco, Tanzania, Guinea and extra in your new album MUTANT, gathered in your travels – what particular flavours and traditions are particular to sure nations?

Every nation I’ve encountered has left a singular sonic imprint that turned a part of the MUTANT universe. As an African artist primarily based in Africa, it’s typically simpler for me to journey throughout the continent and join with artists on a deep cultural and artistic degree. But extra importantly, what’s actually highly effective is the sense of solidarity and inventive kinship I’ve constructed over time. There’s a rising community of African artists who share frequent values, and that has been important in serving to me accumulate, perceive, and reimagine these various sound supplies.

In Morocco, my dwelling, I’ve spent years recording and exploring conventional seems like Ahwach collective dances from the High Atlas, Gnawa religious music rooted in sub-Saharan heritage, and Houara rhythms from the south, every carrying its personal social operate, trance construction, and deep ancestral resonance. These traditions have formed my rhythmic understanding from the start.

In Guinea, I used to be deeply moved by the djembé tradition of the Malinke folks. The drum is not only a musical instrument there, it’s a language, a name to group. The depth and unity of rhythm in Guinea is in contrast to anything. It taught me rather a lot about how collective vitality might be structured and reworked.

In Tanzania, what impressed me most had been the vocal polyphonies, the interaction of human voices in concord and rhythm, typically carried out with none devices. Daily life there may be full of sounds that appear musical: the cadence of speech, the beat of instruments, the rhythm of labour. I additionally recorded environmental sounds, markets, footsteps, distant conversations, which I later processed and layered into new textures.

What’s magical is that not all these recordings got here from bodily journey. Thanks to this sturdy pan-African community I discussed earlier, I used to be in a position to collaborate remotely with artists and recordists throughout the continent. Even if I couldn’t bodily go to a rustic, folks would ship me sound materials, area recordings, oral traditions, vinyl samples, as a result of we shared the identical imaginative and prescient. This wasn’t nearly amassing sounds; it was about constructing belief, exchanging data, and co-constructing a shared archive.

This collaboration at a distance gave me entry not solely to new sonic materials but additionally to new methods of listening. It allowed me to mirror on how rhythms from completely different African nations can converse to at least one one other. The course of introduced me to a deeper understanding of how cultural reminiscence is transmitted by means of sound, and the way various native traditions can resonate and work together inside a shared musical area.

In MUTANT, all of those fragments, Ahwach chants, Tanzanian voices, West African percussion, are reworked. They don’t seem as uncooked samples however are stretched, glitched, pitched, and woven into new patterns. My machines turn into instruments for re-imagining reminiscence, not simply reproducing it. This is how MUTANT turned a speculative sonic map of Africa, primarily based not on borders, however on vibrations, resonances, and cultural dialogues.

What’s subsequent for you within the quick/medium/long run?  What are you listening to that’s inspiring you?  Any extra stay/DJ/launch motion we should always learn about?

In the quick time period, I’m specializing in a sequence of live shows and DJ units to current MUTANT throughout Europe and past. These stay performances aren’t simply reveals, they’re moments of transmission, the place I can see how folks bodily and emotionally reply to the music. I’m additionally creating hybrid codecs that mix stay electronics, sound installations, and visible artwork. I wish to create immersive environments the place sound turns into structure, motion, and reminiscence.

At the identical time, I’m fastidiously observing how audiences work together with the MUTANT album. Their reactions assist me perceive the place the following inventive path is likely to be. I’m not somebody who plans all the things years upfront. I’m deeply rooted within the current second, and I let every expertise feed the following part. In that sense, my subsequent undertaking is born out of the dialogue I’ve with the world, with the locations I’m going, and with the folks I meet.

In the medium time period, I’m persevering with my sonic analysis, particularly round African archives, conventional devices, and new types of rhythm. I’m additionally engaged on increasing my area recording archive by collaborating with artists and researchers throughout the continent. Sometimes, I can’t journey bodily, however I work intently with a community of like-minded individuals who share sounds, tales, and native data. This distant collaboration has turn into a type of sonic solidarity.

Long time period, I hope to maintain evolving this undertaking not solely musically but additionally politically and culturally, constructing bridges between areas, reactivating forgotten reminiscences, and imagining future prospects for African sound. My subsequent releases might discover new sonic territories, however they’ll all the time be grounded on this need to amplify the vibrations of the continent by means of up to date instruments.

Pre-order Mutant on vinyl right here

Pre-order Mutant on CD right here