Music is not the garnish of a Marrakech night; it is the engine. This is a crossroads city — Berber, Arab, African, Andalusian, French — and all of it comes out after dark in a tangle of drums, ouds, brass and voices that turns an ordinary dinner into something you remember. Learn where to find it and the whole city changes key.
Gnawa is the sound to seek first. Descended from the music of enslaved West Africans brought north across the Sahara, it is hypnotic, percussive and trance-deep — iron castanets, a three-string guembri, call-and-response that builds for hours. You will hear a tourist-friendly taste of it on many restaurant terraces; for the real thing, ask locals where the lila ceremonies and serious players are, and go with an open evening ahead of you.
The new town keeps a jazz and lounge scene alive. In Guéliz and Hivernage a handful of rooms run live sets most nights — jazz, soul, the odd crooner working through the standards — the kind of low-lit, late-running bar the French built this quarter for. It is a gentler, more cosmopolitan night than the medina offers, and a fine way to ease into the small hours.
Then there is the square itself. The Jemaa el-Fnaa is the oldest stage in the city — storytellers, snake-charmers by day, and after dark the musicians take over, drum circles forming and dissolving in the smoke of the food stalls. It is free, it is raw, and it is the one show in Marrakech that has been running, more or less unchanged, for a thousand years.
A few habits help. The best music starts late and finds its feet later still, so eat early on a music night and pace yourself. Tip the players who move you — this is how they live. And stay flexible; the finest set you hear in Marrakech will very likely be the one you stumbled into, following a drumbeat down a lane with no idea where it led.