If you think of Gnawa as the Moroccan blues then it makes sense that jazz musicians are repeatedly drawn to it. Like the blues, Gnawa was developed by freed black slaves, and summons feelings of transcendent joy through cyclical riffs (played on the guembri bass lute) and call and response vocals.

Jazz luminaries including Pharoah Sanders and Archie Shepp have collaborated with Gnawa musicians – and this is Peter Brötzmann’s third recorded Gnawa excursion, following on from 1997’s The “WELS” Concert with Mahmoud Gania and 2019’s To Catch A Ghost with Moukhtar Gania.

Long-time Brötzmann associate, Chicagoan drummer Hamid Drake, was present on both previous albums and reprises his role here, latching onto guembri player Majid Bekkas’s deep, rolling vamps and generating endlessly inventive rhythmic variations that burst with enthusiasm and unstoppable joie de vivre. It’s the same wide-ranging sense of pan-cultural, outernational groove he brought to Brötzmann’s classic 2003 trio album Never Too Early But Always Too Late alongside bassist William Parker.

Brötzmann, meanwhile, does his best to disrupt proceedings, throwing in abrasive honks on sax and clarinet that go off like bombs: less concerned with complementing the timeless Gnawa compositions than with sending them on sudden, unforeseen diversions.