Rabat – If you search on platforms like Spotify you are likely to find the biggest and best selling artists globally, but without knowing where to look, this is likely where your search ends.

One genre called “Gnawa” music will probably dominate your search results – and for good reason; it’s a big musical export for Morocco, despite taking up a much smaller space in Morocco’s local music scene. However, to save you trawling through Rough Guides and World Music collections, you can commence your trip with a couple of souvenirs before your plane even lands through a variety of  artist’s albums on Bandcamp.

How Bandcamp works

Bandcamp is a one-stop-shop website for buying mp3s, CDs, vinyl, and merchandise. What makes it special? Your role as a consumer directly supports the artist, rather than contributing to the fees and hassle that comes with production.  Unlike Spotify – where artists earn $0.003 to $0.005 per stream (meaning they need 20,000 – 33,000 streams to earn $100) – artists receive around 82% of the profits from their sales on Bandcamp. On top of this, the website hosts articles and reviews, as well as “album of the day” and the “Discover Weekly” newsletter. But how does all of this help your average tourist?

Searching for Morocco on Bandcamp

Bandcamp allows you to discover smaller, independent artists which give more variety in your listening, alongside articles and reviews to immerse into the music. By searching for ‘Morocco’ you’ll get Gnawa, Jazz Fusion, traditional recordings, HipHop, and Electronic music/remixes. 

This actually covers a lot of ground – Hiphop releases such as Catharsis by Zeroin give you a flavor of a contemporary Moroccan musical landscape as well as the traditional and field recordings that overlap with the samples remixed by electronic musicians. It’s tackling the two extreme ends of the musical spectrum: traditional Gnawa music played live, like Maalem Houssam Guinia’s Dead of Night and Swiri, and fusion groups like Kasbah Rockers, and the music of Madjid Bakkus remixed for the dancefloor by Cervo.

Bandcamp also features articles, many of which include embedded links to recommended tracks which widens your knowledge in manageable chunks. Try: “The Transcendental Sounds of Moroccan Gnawa Music”here. Or learn about lost tapes of field recordings of Moroccan traditional music here. 

Let the sounds you discovered be the soundtrack to your vacation in Morocco, and return home as a fan of newfound genres Furthermore, unlike Spotify’s business model, your money goes directly to the artist with Bandcamp taking a modest cut for hosting and promotion, so you are supporting local Moroccan artists as well as artists making music in the Moroccan diaspora. 

Recommended further reading and listening for your trip to Morocco.

It wouldn’t be complete without learning more about Gnawa music – one of Morocco’s biggest contemporary musical exports: 

An overview:https://daily.bandcamp.com/scene-report/gnawa-bandcamp-list

But dont let Gnawa dominate your search, check out Moroccan Blues:https://amazighblues.bandcamp.com/album/amazigh-blues