In 1994, fourteen years after Led Zeppelin’s thunderous heartbeat, John Bonham, stopped cold, Jimmy Page and Robert Plant crashed back into each other’s orbit. This wasn’t some misty-eyed reunion to dust off old glories—nah, they were out to torch the rulebook and carve a wild new groove. The whole thing ignited when MTV dangled an Unplugged gig in front of them. But Page and Plant? They sneered at the idea of strumming acoustic ghosts of Zeppelin’s past. Instead, they kicked bassist John Paul Jones to the curb and christened the project Unledded—a middle finger to nostalgia and a cannonball dive into uncharted waters.
What they cooked up was a mind-bending mashup of East meets West, taking Zeppelin classics and spiking them with sounds from across the planet. They roped in an Egyptian orchestra, an Indian vocalist, and the fancy-pants London Metropolitan Orchestra, draping their old riffs in layers of lush, movie-score swagger. But the real magic—the gritty, soul-shaking core—went down in Marrakesh, Morocco. That’s where they hooked up with the Gnawa, descendants of sub-Saharan Africans hauled to Morocco as slaves centuries back, whose music pulses with a primal, otherworldly vibe.
In sweaty, smoke-filled sessions, Page and Plant birthed three brand-new tracks with these local legends. The Gnawa brought their A-game: hypnotic guembri basslines rumbling like distant thunder, metallic castanets snapping like gunfire, all weaving a bluesy trance that could’ve been ripped straight from the Mississippi Delta. “We rolled in blind,” Plant said in a ‘94 interview, grinning. “Never met the Gnawa before, but they had patience for days—and a smile? That’s worth more than gold.”
Gnawa music, steeped in spiritual healing and raw devotion, hit Plant like a freight train. “It’s closer to Delta blues than anything Arab,” he mused. “Haunting as hell, seductive, pulls you in and doesn’t let go.”
Unledded wasn’t a trip down memory lane—it was a sonic Molotov cocktail. Page and Plant didn’t just nod to their Zeppelin days; they smashed through them, stitching together a global tapestry of sound that’s as timeless as it is untamed.
