Asmaa Hamzaoui, the foremost female ambassador of Gnawa music, joins the Festival au Désert 2024 bill with her group Bnat Timbouktou.

Though women are essential to Gnawa rituals, there have not been many female Gnawa musicians. Asmaa Hamzaoui & Bnat Timboktou are part of a new wave changing this trend.
Gnawa music goes back in time when this population was held as slaves. Asmaa Hamzaoui stands out as a pioneering female figure in this traditionally male-dominated music.

She was born into a Casablanca family who have lived and breathed Gnawa – her father is a master musician, her mother a dancer. She was taught the guembri as a child, and at an early age, she joined her father’s band on qraqeb and choir, before he encouraged her to start her own group. That became Bnat Timbouktou.

Among the projects of Fondazione Fabbrica Europa developed within the Estate Fiorentina and consolidated over time since 2010, starting from the relationship with the Festival au Désert of Essakane (Timbuktu), the Festival au Désert Firenze involves some of the most interesting musicians and groups on the international scene, great masters and young musicians who have established themselves thanks to an energy that dialogues with the mastery of sounds and rhythms of the traditions of origin.