A centuries-old devotional song from Morocco’s Gnawa repertoire, “M’Bara Meskin” tells of poor M’Bara, left outside the shrine in torn clothes to brew his tea from leaves others have thrown away. Inside, the Sidi and the Lalla, Moroccan honorifics for a gentleman and a lady, sip theirs in their slippers. Sydney-born multi-instrumentalist Julian Belbachir has rebuilt it on reggae and dub, keeping the vocal in Moroccan Arabic, from sessions in Morocco, Mali, Australia, Canada and Jamaica.

Belbachir was born to a Moroccan father and an Australian mother and grew up in Surry Hills and Redfern, where he started on West African drums at five under griots and master drummers from Sydney’s African diaspora. He went on to study percussion and instrument-making in Guinea, Senegal, Mali and Morocco, and plays the kamele n’goni, the harp-lute of Mali’s Wassoulou region. From 2013 to 2022 he drummed for the Australian Indigenous dub band OKA, and after the death of its founder, Stuart “Boga” Fergie, he went solo with his 2022 debut album, Babdoukkala.

Gnawa music was carried into Morocco by West Africans brought north across the Sahara, many of them enslaved, and the personnel on his forthcoming album, The Golden Light, follow the same route: more than 30 musicians from Mali and Morocco, among them Moussa Diakite, lead guitarist for Salif Keita. “M’Bara Meskin” came out on 11 September as its first single, with the album due in February 2027.

Belbachir hears the song as a portrait of “the hardships musicians face in their daily lives“. The video, shot on Super 8 over two trips to Essaouira three years apart, follows his collaborators through rehearsals, recording sessions and time with their community in the Atlantic port best known for its annual Gnawa festival.

Hear “M’Bara Meskin” HERE