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• Women in the Gnawa community in Morocco: Psychotherapy, spirits possession and healing

  109-118

  Meryem Madili

  Views:

  169

  Descendants of slaves from the Sub-Saharan countries brought to Morocco, characterized by their special music with unique rhythms accompanied with spiritual traditions and practices for healing purposes. The Gnawa community represents an intangible cultural heritage in Morocco due to its special rituals and traditions in healing the sick from various diseases by practicing syncretic rituals, trance dances and spiritual music that makes the participant left up with ecstasy. These practices are centred in a ceremony called ‘lila’ in which women play a significant role by leading the healing rituals and communicating with the spirits that possess the participant in order to reach God.

• GNAWA: SPIRITUAL SOUNDS OF HEALING SLAVERY, RITUALS, MUSIC

  127-133

  Meryem Madili

  Views:

  373

  Morocco is known for its cultural and ethnic diversity. In this writing, I would like to shed light on a mystical ethnic group in Morocco that baffled many people from all over the globe; descendants of slaves who traced their origin to Sub-Saharan countries (Mali, Guinea, Ghana, Senegal, Niger). It also refers to a spiritual type of music that can be used as a method of healing with special rituals.

• Psychotherapeutic Journeys into the Spiritual World of Healing on the Wings of Gnawa Music: An Anthropological Study

  63-70

  Meryem Madili

  Views:

  295

  From the sufferings their art was born, from the torture they lived in during their life as slaves their music was created. From the torturing tools used on them they created their own musical instruments. From their screams as slaves, they composed a new music with unique rhythms. Gnawa become a cultural phenomenon in Morocco. A sufi confrerie imploring God, the prophet and the saints to release them from slavery, torture and the sufferings they encountered. Their music is considered spiritual because it calls souls to join its magic. Gnawa plays a psychotherapeutic role in healing people from various diseases through the practices of syncretic rituals and the trance state they put the participants into. All of these elements music, dances and rituals converge and synthesize into an event called lila a rich ceremony in which the sick tormented by spirits could get healed. This paper examines the practices and impact of the lila ceremony on the community from a psychological point of view revealing each step of the collective healing process and methods as used in the rituals.