BIO
Tim Abdellah Fuson is a musician and ethnomusicologist from the San Francisco Bay Area. A specialist in North African music, particularly that of the Moroccan Gnawa, Tim Abdellah performs in several North African ensembles in the Bay Area and has taught at UC Berkeley, USF and Zambaleta World Music and Dance School.
As a performer and songwriter, Tim was a member of the East Bay's acoustic Square Roots and electric Guitardoz in the 1980s. After breaking from performing to pursue degrees in music and anthropology and to sing many Madonna songs, Tim became deeply involved with Moroccan music. Over the course of several long sojourns in Marrakech, Tim Abdellah learned the arts of tagnawit (Gnawa ritual practice) as well as the loopy grooves of Moroccan folk and popular music.
Since the early '90s, Tim Abdellah has performed with North African groups in California including Yassir Chadly's Moroccan ensembles, Maghrebi rock band The Dunes, Moh Alileche's Algerian Amazigh ensemble, MC Rai's pop-rai bands, and the legendary Cheb Nasro. He has performed locally with Gnawa musician Hassan Hakmoun, Rai diva Chaba Zahouania and Algerian singer Samir Toumi.
Dr. Fuson received a PhD in ethnomusicology from UC Berkeley in 2009, completing a dissertation entitled "Musicking Moves and Ritual Grooves Across the Moroccan Gnawa Night." He has taught college courses on American Music, Music of the Middle East and North Africa, Musical Dimensions of Islam, and Music and Trance. In 2010, he inaugurated the Bay Area's first class in Gnawa Music and Movement at Zambaleta.