Nass El Ghiwane & Jil Jilala

Nass El Ghiwane first came together as an avant-garde theater project in Casablanca in 1971 – and turned into the great renewers of North African pop music.

They fused the Trance sound of the Gnawa with instruments such as banjos or congas and, in the process, invented Moroccan Chaabi-Pop, which is similar to Raï. It was in this movement that Jil Jilala grew up – their name can be traced back to the spiritual music of the Sufi brotherhood of Jilala, from which they draw their inspiration, unlike Nass El Ghiwane. Since the 1970s, both bands have achieved cult status on their native scenes and are regarded as the Beatles and Stones of the Maghreb. And their influence spread further in 1988, when they scored the soundtrack to Martin Scorsese’s “The Last Temptation of Christ“. WASSERMUSIK features a summit of the two legends.