Amina
Alaoui is a scholar of philology, linguistics,
and dance, and a prominent exponent of the
ancient music style gharnati.
She was born in 1964 to a traditional Fassi
family, and has pursued an eclectic musical path
that lead her to work with musicians from
medieval, Persian, and flamenco musical
backgrounds.
She is accompanied here by the ensemble of Ahmed
Piro, a native of Rabat who is considered one of
the great Andalusian musicians.
Gharnati(Arabic for
Granada) is one of the major Andalusian
musical styles, migrated from Granada, Spain to
Morocco in the 15th century. Its roots lie in
the diverse music schools of medieval Andalusia,
where the Arab-Andalusian musical style
originally developed some 800 years earlier.
Gharnati was preserved by the Tlemceni families
and other communities that fled Spain to settle
in several places, Marocco, especially in Fes.
