Musica, arti visive, street fashion: lo stile afro-gnawa a Essaouira (Marocco)

Since its founding, Essaouira, a port city on the Moroccan Atlantic coast, maintains a special relationship with sub-Saharan Africa and it is nowadays the outpost of black African culture in Morocco. The Gnawa, descendants of black slaves brought to Morocco from the Sixteenth to the early Twentieth centuries, in fact, play an essential role in the urban life and in its cultural and artistic production. The "afro-gnawa style" has a strong influence on music, visual arts, fashion: very often, for example, local youth wear brightly colored clothing and afro hairstyles (like rasta dreadlocks). The central role of the Gnawa in Essaouira urban culture remains undoubtedly a unique phenomenon in the Maghrib area, where the black minorities are usually marginalized.