Think You've Heard It All? Check Out Nawal

In a recent Around the World, Nick Gold -- the mainstay of groundbreaking label World Circuit Records and one of the prime movers of the Buena Vista Social Club projects -- mused as to whether there were any undiscovered lands, musically speaking, left to discover after the explosion of interest in international music of the past couple of decades. Just a few weeks later, though, a discovery took place in a very unlikely locale -- the tiny Coffee Gallery cafe in Altadena, California, a quiet community in the foothills above Pasadena.

It was one of several Southern California stops for Nawal, a woman who bears music that originated in a locale with which even few in the audience that had come to see her were more than nominally familiar at best: the Comoros Islands. The Comoros are four specks in the western Indian Ocean, cradled between the northern tip of Madagascar and the protruding coast of Mozambique, pretty much unknown except to dedicated geography students and devotees of the history of the spice trade. The latter, though, is crucial to the nature of the music. While it seems very little music has made its way off the islands for others' ears to this point, for centuries the sounds of lots of outside cultures made their way to the Comoros. That comes with the territory when you're a coveted locale on fought-over trade routes for centuries, a time during which which the African-originated population was ruled by Arabs and then the French, with heavy traffic from India and beyond, before gaining turmoil-filled independence in 1975.
"We have East African, South African, Bantu, Arabic, Persian, Indonesian, French, Yemeni, Ethiopian -- all these influences," explained the lean, stately Nawal before the Altadena performance. There are musicians in the Comoros, she says, who work with varying traditions from those roots. She, though, has tried to encompass it all. That's very clear to any discerning ear taking in her two albums, 2001's 'Keweli' (which means "Truth") and the new 'Aman' ("Peace of the Soul"), both released through her own company. All those elements are infused with a prayerful quality drawn from her Sufi Muslim grounding.

'Aman' opens with a serene chant of 'Salama' ("Peace"), a track written as a call for unity after the September 11 attacks on the U.S., and 'Meditation' was taken from a speech by Nelson Mandela, whom Nawal later learned was quoting from American poet Marianne Williamson. The essential line, which she speaks in English, is "There is nothing that is not God." In the concert, she gave the music even more warmth and intimacy, weaving her musical threads with her own fine touch on nylon-string guitar and gambusi, a rough-hewn stringed instrument carved from one piece of wood and stretched with goatskin. As on the new album, she had colorfully intuitive accompaniment from her brother Idriss Mlanao on double bass and San Francisco musician Melissa Rigoli on a variety of percussion including African calabash gourd, Indian clay pot, mbira (thumb piano) and bells.

"My music is one that is not traditional," she said. "I'm trying to make all that is my identity." Yet she has found that her identity is, in fact, very much reflective of an emerging sense of national identity in her home country. Technically, she's something of an outsider. For one, her Sufi orientation makes her part of a small minority in the Comoros, where Sunni is by far the dominant sect. And for much of her life she has lived in Paris, returning to the Comoros only on occasion. "I am what they call a 'double culture,' " she said, noting her removal from truly traditional Comoros music not just by geography but also by gender. "It's expensive and far away, and hard for a woman to make music there," she said, stressing that even for men, music is rarely a full-time occupation there, but for women it's considered an inappropriate pursuit. "They say, 'Play like a man.'"

But when she returned to perform at a concert there late last year, she found that her music has resonated. "I was there in November, playing there for the first time in 10 years, and it was really magic! Things have changed," she said. "People came to my shows with signs saying, 'We believe in you,' and they knew my songs already! 'How do you know that?' They say, 'How can you do traditional that's not traditional?' We're all seeking harmony between old and new." In the process, it's as if she herself as discovered -- or rediscovered -- her impoverished native islands, where she is working on instituting a music, dance and theater-arts program to help others, both there and in the rest of the world, have chances to do the same. "I'm a universal woman, a world citizen. I'm at home everywhere. Comoros, I was born there and it's my country and I want to help."