Samir LanGus: Where Gnawa Meets the World
- Stevie Connor
- 5 hours ago
- 5 min read
By Stevie Connor | The Sound Cafe Journal
Samir LanGus Builds A Bridge Between Morocco and the World On Debut Solo Album Gnawa Love
Featuring Hamid El Kasri, Etienne Charles And More
Music can carry a history without ever sounding like a history lesson. It can preserve where we come from while still allowing us to discover where we might be going. For Moroccan-born, New York-based musician and composer Samir LanGus, that connection sits at the heart of his debut solo album, Gnawa Love.
Released in February 2026, Gnawa Love brings together the Gnawa traditions LanGus grew up with in Morocco and the contemporary musical environment he has experienced since moving to New York. The result is an album built around rhythm, spirituality, jazz, funk, folk, improvisation and global influences, but underneath all of that is something considerably more personal: a desire to reconnect with home, heritage and the musical language that has been part of his life from the beginning.
Gnawa is sometimes described as the Moroccan blues, although that description only tells part of its story. It is a deeply rooted spiritual and cultural tradition with African roots, shaped by the history and experiences of Gnawa communities in Morocco. Rhythm, repetition, call and response and trance are central to its musical language.
For LanGus, this isn't simply a musical style he chose to explore. It is part of where he comes from.
Born and raised in Ait Melloul, Morocco, LanGus grew up immersed in Gnawa culture and became an apprentice to Maalem Hamid El Kasri, one of the most celebrated masters of the tradition. Through that relationship he learned the Sintir, the three-stringed lute that provides much of Gnawa's distinctive sound, along with the Krakebs, metal castanets whose rhythmic patterns are fundamental to the music.
Those instruments and rhythms remain important to the music LanGus creates today, but his journey eventually took him far from Morocco.
After moving to New York around a decade ago, he found himself in one of the world's great musical crossroads. Rather than leaving Gnawa behind, he began exploring what could happen when the music he had grown up with was placed alongside jazz, funk, electronic music, folk and other contemporary influences.
That exploration became Gnawa Love.
The album contains eleven tracks and runs for around 44 minutes. There is enough room for LanGus to move between different moods and approaches, from the rhythmic drive of the opening title track through “Habibi,” “Aicha,” “Desert Blues,” “Prayer” and the extended “Trance,” before closing with “La Contessa.”
It is in those individual tracks that the wider story of the album begins to take shape.
“Habibi,” featuring Trinidadian trumpeter Etienne Charles, brings a powerful jazz voice into LanGus's Gnawa foundation. Charles's trumpet doesn't feel like an addition simply designed to make the collaboration look international. It becomes another musical language within the conversation.
“Aicha,” featuring Brazilian rhythm collective Miamibloco, takes that idea in another direction, bringing Brazilian rhythmic energy into the album. Miamibloco also appears on “La Contessa,” while producer and artist Proda features on the opening title track and “Trance.”
Then there is “Trance,” featuring Hamid El Kasri and Proda.
There is something particularly fitting about that collaboration.
A musician who learned his tradition from a master eventually creates his own album and brings that same master into the project. It creates a direct line between the music LanGus learned in Morocco and the music he is now creating in New York.
LanGus describes Gnawa Love as “a journey to the common root,” and that phrase captures what makes the album more interesting than a straightforward exercise in musical fusion. Moroccan and West African traditions, the African diaspora and the energy of New York all become part of the same conversation.
There is a personal story underneath it as well.
LanGus describes the album as being born from a longing for home, healing and connection. He has spoken about carrying the spirit of Gnawa with him when he moved to the United States and feeling its absence just as deeply. The album became his way of keeping that connection alive while allowing the music to develop through the people and places he encountered along the way.
That gives Gnawa Love a purpose beyond simply combining different musical styles.
LanGus isn't trying to make Gnawa sound like jazz, funk or electronic music. He is taking the music he knows and allowing it to exist within a much larger musical environment.
That is how traditions have always travelled.
People move. Instruments move. Ideas move. Music moves with them.
What begins in one place can find itself somewhere completely different, shaped by new experiences without necessarily losing the identity that gave it meaning in the first place.
LanGus's journey is a particularly good example of that process. His musical foundation remains rooted in Morocco, but his experience of living and creating in New York has become part of the sound as well.
The album therefore becomes a meeting point between two worlds rather than a choice between them.
LanGus has already demonstrated how naturally his music can move between different musical communities. In 2018, he was part of the Grammy-nominated “Bambro Koyo Ganda,” a collaboration with Bonobo and Innov Gnawa that received a nomination for Best Dance/Electronic Recording at the 60th Annual Grammy Awards.
That recognition demonstrated that Gnawa could find a place within contemporary electronic music without losing the character that made it distinctive in the first place.
But Gnawa Love feels more personal than simply another international collaboration.
This time, his own heritage is at the centre.
That also gives the album a wider significance. LanGus has spoken about the importance of African musicians seeing their own traditions transform the wider musical world rather than treating those traditions as something belonging only to the past. Gnawa Love is his contribution to that ongoing conversation.
Heritage doesn't have to mean standing still.
Sometimes it means giving the next generation the freedom to take what they have been given and discover what it can become.
That is what LanGus is doing with Gnawa Love. The Sintir and Krakebs remain part of the foundation, but around them are trumpets, synthesizers, guitars, drums, harmonies, percussion and improvisation. The traditional pulse remains, but the surroundings have changed.
And perhaps that is why the title Gnawa Love feels appropriate.
It is love of place, culture, ancestry and music. It is also about the connection between a student and a teacher, between Morocco and New York, and between musicians who come from very different backgrounds but understand what rhythm can do when they meet in the same space.
LanGus describes Gnawa as a portal.
Listening to the story behind Gnawa Love, it is easy to understand why.
It is a portal between generations and cultures, between memory and the present, and between the place where an artist begins and the places music eventually takes him.
Samir LanGus has taken the music he grew up with in Ait Melloul and carried it into another world. He hasn't left its history behind. Instead, he has given that history new surroundings, new collaborators and a new audience.
Gnawa Love is out now on vinyl and across digital platforms.
Samir LanGus – Gnawa Love East Coast Tour
September 7 — Unexpected Music, Woodstock, NY
September 16 — Nublu, Manhattan, NY
September 17 — Tacoma Station, Washington, DC
September 18 — North Carolina Folk Festival, Greensboro, NC
September 19 — North Carolina Folk Festival, Greensboro, NC
September 20 — Reveler Experience, Richmond, VA
For an artist whose music has always been about carrying something from one place to another, taking Gnawa Love onto the road feels like the natural next part of the journey.
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