{"id":97050,"date":"2022-01-19T15:01:00","date_gmt":"2022-01-19T13:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/?p=97050"},"modified":"2023-03-16T13:21:19","modified_gmt":"2023-03-16T11:21:19","slug":"with-the-priestesses-of-zar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/en\/with-the-priestesses-of-zar\/","title":{"rendered":"With the priestesses of z\u00e3r"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In the heart of a Dutch winter the Jacobikerk, a small Protestant church in Utrecht and the traditional starting point for Dutch pilgrims on their way to Santiago de Compostela, awaits a sacred event. This is the fifteenth edition of Le Guess Who? festival, one of Europe\u2019s most audacious musical events, and tonight the festival is hosting a mysterious female-led Egyptian ensemble called Mazaher. Their arrival is exceptional \u2013 the group has not performed in Europe for more than fifteen years \u2013 and so is their music. The six members of Mazaher are the last practitioners of z\u00e3r, a therapeutic trance ritual that heals and delivers. But for whom and from what exactly?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the Encyclopedia of Demons and Demonology (Facts on File, Inc. – 2009) Rosemary Ellen Guiley refers to z\u00e3r as evil spirits who torment a human host, usually a woman. \u201cThe victim is then brought before a Shechah<\/em> (or Chikha, \u2018elder\u2019 in Arabic), the clairvoyant-therapist who conducts the ceremony and will identify precisely which z\u00e3r is responsible for the disturbance from among a vast pantheon of spirits. Once questioned \u2013 sometimes in the z\u00e3r language, understandable only to the Shechah \u2013 the evil emissary asks to receive a certain number of gifts in order to be satisfied, before it will stop tormenting its host.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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On the right is Madiha, the doyenne of z\u00e3r, facing an audience at Jacobikerk, Le Guess Who? festival, 2021. \u00a9 Juri Hiensch. <\/em><\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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The z\u00e3r then designates a group of spirits and, by extension, which ritual will be required in order to appease them for the salvation of the possessed. With an average age of over sixty-five, the members of the Mazaher Ensemble are the last heirs and practitioners of this ceremony in Egypt. The 90 minute concert they gave that night, in the heart of this astonishing Protestant church, is only a tiny taste of all that can unfold during a ceremony: satisfying a spirit can require up to seven leilas (\u2018nights\u2019 in Arabic) of ecstatic song and dance, offerings, fiery percussion, incense, and lamb\u2019s blood rubbed onto the victim\u2019s forehead. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat we do has nothing to do with exorcism<\/em>\u201d, says Madiha, the lead singer of Mazaher. \u2018The objective of z\u00e3r is for the participants to find harmony with their inner selves. Our music, our songs are primarily spiritual, and they help relieve the listeners of stress and bad vibrations.<\/em>\u201d The doyenne of z\u00e3r has been singing since she was 11 years old. Her mother was also a z\u00e3r singer, who in turn started singing with her own mother as a young child in Upper Egypt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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