Portland-based group Seffarine releases new album

The Portland-based group Seffarine blends traditional music from Morocco and Southern Spain with jazz and other contemporary genres. Their upcoming album, “Abaraz,” explores the music of Southern Morocco and the Arab and West African music that influenced it. The album was inspired by the band’s residency in Mhamid El Ghizlane, an oasis at the edge of the Sahara Desert where the landscape is rapidly shifting due to climate change.

Nat Hulskamp and Lamiae Naki are the founders of Seffarine. We’ll talk with them about the new album and their upcoming shows at the PRAx in Corvallis on Oct. 14 and at the Patricia Reser Center for the Arts in Beaverton on Oct. 16, which will feature clips of interviews with the musicians they met in Mhamid El Ghizlane.

Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.

Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller.The Portland-based group Seffarine blends traditional music from Morocco and Southern Spain with jazz and other contemporary genres.Their new album, “Abaraz,” explores the sounds of Southern Morocco, which was influenced by Arab and West African music.It was inspired by the band’s residency at an oasis at the edge of the Sahara Desert, where the landscape is rapidly shifting due to climate change.They’ll be performing at the PRAx in Corvallis this Wednesday and at the Patricia Reser Center for the Arts in Beaverton this Friday. Lamiae Naki and Nat Hulskamp are the founders of Seffarine. They join us now. Welcome back to Think Out Loud.

Lamiae Naki: Hi. Welcome to us with you.

Nat Hulskamp: Thanks for having us.

Miller: It’s great to have you both on the show. I want to start right in with one of the tracks from the new album. It’s called, I don’t know if I’m pronouncing this correctly, “Shahal Min Merrah.” What should we know about the song actually before we hear it?

Naki: “Shahal Min Merrah” talks actually about how many times we try, over and over, to find that water source, the water source that we lost, and trying to write about the climate change and also write about the emotion that comes to the people when they leave their homes and trying, because of water being so little in the region. So they go and look for water, look for other resources, leave their home, and that disconnection, how it feels when you leave home, what you leave behind. And so the song talks about all these emotions in turmoil.

Miller: Let’s have a listen:

[Music plays]

Miller: This is “Shahal Min Merrah” from the new album “Abaraz” from the group Seffarine. For your last album, you explored the connections between Morocco and neighbors to the north on the Iberian Peninsula. What made you want to go south this time, to the edge of the desert?

Hulskamp: Yeah, as you mentioned, that last project was really based on a lot of collaborations in Spain, based on all the exchange over the centuries between North Africa and Southern Europe, especially Spain, and flamenco music, which you can hear, that’s still part of our work. You can kind of hear that in this song, “Shahal Min Merrah,” and partly because we didn’t want to repeat the same concept, but also we found ourselves listening more and more to the music of Mali, because there’s so much overlap with the music of Southern Morocco, which is kind of the Sahara, which is the southern border of Morocco.

It’s kind of the other crossroad in Morocco. When you’re in the south of Morocco, you really feel that it’s the Africa-facing side of Morocco, a very different mix of cultures and musical influences in our case. So there’s a lot of overlap with Malian music that came across the desert over the years, and of course North African music also influenced the music of the other side of the desert. Areas like Timbuktu and Segou, Mali and Burkina Faso. So we found ourselves listening more and more to that music.

It also is where Lamiae’s roots are from, even though she grew up in a more urban setting in a big city called Fes in Central Morocco. It was also my connection from years and years ago, chasing the music, kind of running around as a teenage music student on the loose in the desert, recording different kinds of music. So it’s kind of a return for both of us.

Miller: Lamiae, what did it mean to you then, to be in this place where your family has roots?

Naki: Yeah, it’s always a strong experience for me. My family are from the Drâa Valley in Morocco in a region called Tafilalet, and my great grandpa, my grandpa, they kept moving around Morocco, and it was this disconnection. And for me, it’s coming back to my roots and reconnecting with the music, reconnecting with the people, listening to their stories, listening to their music. It just adds to my soul, of course, and the music that we write.

Miller: And Nat, you said you were there as a teenager?

Naki: Yeah. Before going to college and studying ethnomusicology is partly what led to it. I went to Morocco first in the north, the main identity in the north of Morocco are the descendants of the people and culture that came after the Inquisition across the Straits of Gibraltar; so Andalusia music or the music of Muslim Spain, pre-Inquisition Spain, is really kept alive in the north of Morocco, as well as Algeria and Tunisia, but really right there across the Straits of Gibraltar.

So I was studying that, and then began traveling and really realized I was deeply interested in all of the different traditions. Morocco’s incredibly diverse, musically and culturally. So I was just traveling around with a little stereo mic and a DAT recorder. This is back in the mid-90s and that was the newest technology at the time.

Miller: I remember DATs. I love them. They seemed like magic in the 90s, early 2000s.

Hulskamp: Right. Exactly.

Naki: The quality is amazing.

Hulskamp: So, everywhere I went, I would meet musicians, learn a lot, listen a lot, sometimes collaborate, but I was mostly learning and recording and taking notes, and then years later I went back and Lamiae and I met and started this project.

Miller: Lamiae, can you describe what the area, what M’Hamid, what it looks like?

Naki: M’Hamid El Ghizlane is an oasis in the south of Morocco, ten hours away from Marrakesh. You cross the Atlas Mountains to get to it, and it is literally the end of the road. Once you’re at M’Hamid El Ghizlane there is no other road, only the sand, until you get to Timbuktu from M’Hamid El Ghizlane.

And the region suffers a lot from climate change, and if you see the buildings there, if you go to any corner in the city, you see the effect of climate change, the houses collapsing, the sand moving forward. The sand covers the buildings, actually, it feels like it devours the buildings, and you see people trying to get through. They use the palm trees’ leaves to stop the sand from… but it can’t really, they keep trying to stop the sand, but the sand is so strong and it keeps moving forward. So that’s the area, the oasis, the palm trees are unfortunately dying. You see a lot of dry palm trees around, so there is a lot of climate change there, very noticeable.

Miller: Nat, can you tell us about the musicians that you encountered there?

Hulskamp: Sure. We went there first for a residency, actually, at a music school in M’Hamid called Joudour Sahara that is trying to document and preserve and teach to young people the many, many traditions, because as Lamiae mentioned, it’s really at the end of the road. It was also kind of the departure point and arrival point for the caravans that went across the Sahara, so it’s been a crossroad of many cultures over the centuries, so musically, it makes it a really interesting crossroad.There are Arab nomads with their own traditions. There was a Jewish community there for thousands of years. There are descendants of West African enslaved people with their own traditions that were brought across the Sahara, the Indigenous Amazigh, of course, with their many, many different traditions in the region.

So we went for this residency at Joudour Sahara, and it can get up to 130 degrees, so we did a lot of playing at night, of course, usually on the roof of the music building, and so all these different traditions was like a little crossroads on the roof of the music school each night. So we learned a lot and we taught some classes too, just sharing what we have also, but mostly listening, learning and forming really good friendships that have lasted these last few years while we’ve been doing the project, and eventually the recording grew out of that and the collaborations.

Miller: Let’s listen to another song from the album. Lamiae, this is called “Ah Ya Liyyam.” What should we listen for here?

Naki: A lot of rhythm, a lot of energy, Moroccan, Saharan influences with West African also.

Miller: This is “Ah Ya Liyyam” from the new Seffarine album, “Abaraz.”

[Music plays]

Miller: Lamiae, who is singing with you there?

Naki: Singers from M’Hamid El Ghizlane, choruses from there and also some choruses from Biougra in the south of Agadir, Morocco.

Miller: In our last conversation, you talked about the stigma of being a Moroccan woman performing music. Has that changed much? Have you noticed more acceptance for women who choose music as a professional life?

Naki: I won’t say that the stigma is gone from female singers. There’s still the struggle for women to be a musician, to take the path of being a musician in Morocco, but some families… depends on your family. Some families encourage their daughters to follow the path of music. In M’Hamid El Ghizlane, specifically in Joudour Sahara, we noticed that a lot of families encouraged their daughters to go to the school, and the number of female students there were about 60%, which is very encouraging.

Miller: Were you seen as a kind of role model?

Naki: Yes, which is, it’s interesting. I’m so happy to see people being inspired by what I do in M’Hamid El Ghizlane and also trying to follow the path of music too.

Hulskamp: Yeah, Lamiae is humble about that, but it was really beautiful to see the young female students looking at Lamiae definitely as a role model, one of the few women who has pursued music as a career and is traveling around the world performing her own music, and it was beautiful. And we had, like you heard in the song, we had some of the students join us, singing the kind of call and response chorus of the traditional music there.

Miller: Nat, we heard Lamiae talking earlier about this community on the edge of the desert, this oasis, being essentially taken over by sand, just becoming subsumed by the desert. What did you hear, especially from young people that you talked to, about the possibility of their community disappearing?

Hulskamp: Yeah, they’re learning the traditions of the region, which it’s really at risk, and I think they’re aware of it, but it’s great to see that they’re enthusiastically going to the school, attending and learning the traditions. What’s happening is the traditions are being threatened. There’s kind of an interruption in the transmission of the culture from the elders to the young people as the active part of the population, the middle-aged, leaves for Marrakesh or Casablanca, the bigger cities for opportunity.

At this point, the river, Morocco’s largest river, has gone dry, and the oasis is not producing anymore. So a lot of people, of course, in that kind of middle of the pyramid have left. And so the elders, this is this huge breach in transmission from the elders to the young people. So, it’s really great to see them embracing these traditions, and they’re enthusiastically learning them, the dance, too, not just the music, but the dance.

Miller: Let’s listen to one more song. This is called “Ma Bqali Hal,” which I have read translates to something like, “I have no solutions left.” Lamiae, first of all, that’s just what Google told me today. Is that an accurate translation for the title of the song?

Naki: Yeah, I have no solutions, only to leave the place. The song talks about that, when you leave a place, you leave behind memories. You leave, and you carry with you also memories, and the fear that the sand will cover your steps before you could find your way back. But as human beings, we always travel, we always go to places, and we carry with us those memories.

[Music plays]

Miller: That was “Ma Bqali Hal” from the new Seffarine album “Abaraz.” As I mentioned, they’ll be performing at the PRAx in Corvallis this Wednesday and the Patricia Reser Center for the Arts in Beaverton this Friday. Nat, what can people expect at these shows in addition to your music?

Hulskamp: Yeah, there is a lot, actually. In this case, it’s a multimedia concert that will include projections of some of the video that we gathered during our trips to M’Hamid by the great Spanish videographers from Malaga, Pablo Macias and Soledad Villalba. We found the perfect partners for this project and they really captured the feel of being in M’Hamid.

The images, not just of the landscape, but life there, and the fact that it’s a home for people, and I think we forget that. We think of the desert as a barren place, but it’s actually something that connected Morocco to West Africa, and is very much a home to many people, and this whole project really became about the people. The video gave us a way to kind of transport the audience to the oasis.

And of course there’s the music, based on the collaborations that grew out of our residency, and there will be musicians that have come all the way from Spain, Morocco, and a Tunisian bassist named Marwan Allam that lives in New York, but he’ll be here. And Portland percussionist Darian Patrick will be joining us too. And actually the videographers will be here to project the video that they gathered. So the idea is that the record contains the music, and the show, with its projections and everything, gives us a chance to share what we witnessed and let the people from the community speak for themselves a bit.

Miller: Nat and Lamiae, thanks very much.

Hulskamp: Thanks for having us.

Naki: Thank you for having us.

Miller: Nat Hulskamp and Lamiae Naki are co-founders of the group Seffarine. Their new album is called “Abaraz.”

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