Archive for the ‘North African Music’ Category
Updating the archive: interview of Moroccan rock star Reda Allali (Hoba Hoba Spirit)for MTV IGGY
Moroccan Rock Legend & Journalist
Reda Allali Wants to Save The Music
JOURNALIST AND HOBA HOBA SPIRIT GUITARIST, SINGER AND SONGWRITER TALKS THE BUSINESS OF MUSIC IN MOROCCO
By MTV Iggy
October 10, 2012
Words by Jeffrey Callen, Ph. D.
Hoba Hoba Spirit was there when an alternative music scene came together in Casablanca in the late 1990s. They were there on the front lines of the protests after 14 heavy-metal musicians and fans were arrested and accused of being satanists in 2003. Creating distinctively Moroccan rock ‘n’ roll (with lyrics in French, Darija and English, and music infused with healthy doses of Gnawa music, reggae & Moroccan rhythms), many critics and supporters considered them too hip to ever be popular outside of Casablanca. Playing wherever they could get a gig, they introduced the live experience of rock ‘n roll to audiences in small cities and villages throughout Morocco and, by 2007, they had become one of the most popular Moroccan musical acts of any genre. More than any other alternative band, Hoba Hoba Spirit has advocated an opening of the Moroccan cultural landscape—through music and through the writing of bandleader and journalist Reda Allali in the magazine Telquel. In a far-ranging interview, Allali talks with ethnomusicologist Jeffrey Callen about the Hoba way, their unexpected road to success, the alternative music movement and the obstacles to making a living as a musician in Morocco.
(to read the rest, click here)
Updating the archive: article on Moroccan Alternative Music for MTV IGGY
In Search of Alternative Music in Morocco
A DEEP DIVE INTO THE STATE OF MOROCCAN MUSIC OVER THE YEARS.
By MTV Iggy
September 27, 2012
Words by Jeffrey Callen, Ph. D.
In the late 1990s, an alternative music community came together in Casablanca that would dramatically change Moroccan popular music. Cultural outsiders, brought together by shared aesthetics and the support of a local community organization, hip-hop, rock, electronica, and “fusion” musicians joined together to make common cause to expand the boundaries of Moroccan music. Although it was their joining together in the late 1990s that would dramatically change the country’s musical landscape, each of these genres has its own separate history in Morocco.
The Prehistory— Genres on the Margins
Rock ‘n’ roll. The history of rock ‘n roll in Morocco goes back to the 1960s when young musicians formed hundreds of rock bands in cities throughout the country. By the 1970s, the first Moroccan rock explosion was over, eclipsed by a folk–revival that began in Casablanca and soon swept through North Africa, (to read the rest, click here)
Updating the archive: article on Gnawa music for MTV IGGY
Healing via Rock’n’Roll? Morocco’s Gnawa Music Leads the Way
By MTV Iggy
September 27, 2012
Words by Jeffrey Callen, Ph. D. Photo by Nusrat Durrani.
The driving rhythm of the qraqebs (large metal hand cymbals) quickly envelop the listener, creating a sonic wall that simultaneously supports and obscures the bass pattern provided by the hajhouj (bass lute). In a healing context — and this is healing music — the afflicted individual must find his way to a particular melody provided by the hajhouj in order to enter into a dialogue with the spirit that is perplexing him or her. Sung invocations, particular colors and incense hasten the summoning of the spirit and the falling of the afflicted individual into the trance state where the healing takes place. A lila(all-night healing ceremony) is a multi-sensual event but it is the music that drives it, orchestrates its highs and lows, and signals the entry of the different spirits. This is the music of the Gnawa of Morocco and you can hear — and feel — the kinship with musical/healing practices, such as Santeria(Cuba) and Candomble (Brazil), that while born in the Americas, have clear West African roots. You can also feel the kinship with other tributaries of the West African musical river—rock, blues, jazz, reggae and numerous other pop musics—that were born in the Americas but have since spread throughout the world.
(to read the rest, click here)
French Fries in the Tagine — Moroccan Alternative Music
In 2002, I spent the year researching the emergence of an alternative music movement in Morocco. Made up of a collection of genres that lie on the periphery of mainstream culture — hip-hop, 
electronica, rock/metal, fusion — alternative music had yet to break through. 2002 was its year on the cusp. In 2003, it would make its move to center stage and, within a few years, hip-hop and fusion bands would become major players in Moroccan pop culture.
My dissertation, French Fries in the Tagine: Re-imagining Moroccan Popular Music (UCLA, Department of Ethnomusicology, 2006), which focused on fusion, examined this change in the musical playing field, how it happened and what it meant. I’m posting this link to share the work and ask for feedback. I’m currently writing a book on Moroccan alternative music that will hopefully bring this fascinating story to a wider audience.
All the best,
Jeffrey Callen, Ph.D.
Now for a little music:
Review: Traveling Spirit Masters: Moroccan Gnawa Trance and Music in the Global Marketplace, by Deborah Kapchan (Middle Eastern Studies Association Bulletin)
This review was published in the Winter 2008/2009 edition of the Middle Eastern Studies Association Bulletin
Traveling Spirit Masters: Moroccan Gnawa Trance and Music in the Global Marketplace, by Deborah Kapchan. 325 pages, 19 b/w illus., endnotes, bibliography, index. Middleton, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2007. $75.00 (unjacketed cloth) ISBN 0-8195-6851-1, $27.95 (paper) ISBN 0-8195-6852-X.
reviewed by Jeffrey Callen
The ritual practice of the Gnawa, a Moroccan Islamic order formed by descendants of slaves from sub-Saharan Africa, centers on the performance of healing rituals (lilat; sing. lila). During a lila, afflicted individuals enter into trance and communicate with and placate spirits that are causing disturbances of their physical or psychological well-being. Lilat and the experience of trance have been the predominant focus of scholarly attention on the Gnawa, most notably from Francophone scholars (most notably Viviana Pâcques and Bertrand Hell). Traveling Spirit Masters, the first English language book of scholarship on the Gnawa, extends that focus to examine the ways in which trance and the Gnawa themselves have become commodities in the international marketplace. In the “Introduction”, Kapchan asserts that Traveling Spirit Masters is not a book about the Gnawa but an exploration of the “power of trance, the way it circulates globally, and its relation to music and gendered subjectivity” (1). To fulfill the broad scope of this goal, the book is divided into two sections: “The Culture of Possession” (Chapters 1-5) and “Possessing Culture” (Chapters 6-11). The first section, set in Morocco, explores the ritual practice of the Gnawa with particular focus on the role and involvement of women, both as individuals who seek relief through trance, and as overseers of the rituals (mqaddemat, pl.). The second section, set in France and Morocco, examines the movement of the Gnawa and their musical practice into the global marketplace. (for the entire review click here)
Addendum to: It’s only rock ‘n’ roll (Tinariwen)
The exoticizing of the non-Western other in World Music is a continuing phenomenon — freely used in marketing and eagerly accepted by most fans. “Music of resistance” is one sub-category of that phenomenon. In a recent preview of a San Francisco concert by Tinariwen, I avoided emphasizing their music as born out of resistance (it’s only part of the back story) but the headline my editor wrote included “rebel music” as a descriptor (see: It’s only rock ‘n’ roll — also links to two other recent pieces on Tinariwen).
Today (February 20, 2010), the Touareg website Temoust posted an enlightening interview with sociologist Denis-Constant Martin of the Cité de la musique museum in Paris. Martin discusses the “musics of resistance” phenomenon. Must reading for World Music fans.
Musique touaregue de résistance : La marchandisation des sons (reposted from the Cité de la musique website: )
“Un mythe, voire une mystique de la résistance s’instaure à partir de discours tenus sur la musique qui ne correspondent pas nécessairement à ce que l’analyse musicale pourrait elle-même déceler.”(“A myth or a mystique of resistance is established from discourses about music that does not necessarily correspond to what music analysis itself could detect.”)
It’s only rock ‘n’ roll (@ East Bay Express)
Desert Rock — Tinariwen brings rebel music out of the Southern Sahara
A slow Hendrix blues riff, deep, rough and insistent, slashes through the aural space. Broken down and repeated, the opening riff is joined by the offbeat upstrokes of a second, trebly electric guitar establishing a shuffle counterpoint. A fast rap barely breaks through the sound of the guitars, becoming louder when it morphs into a sung chorus with backing vocals (three, maybe four words). About four minutes in, the guitars drop out and the song is stripped down: a fast rap over a loopy funk bass line, accompanied by handclaps and soft percussion. The offbeat guitar upstrokes return joined by an arpeggiated riff on a second guitar, then a lead guitar. The vocals become secondary as the guitars propel the song to its ending and the opening riff returns. While the description could fit a performance of an up-and-coming indie band at the Noise Pop festival later this month, (to read more click here for the East Bay Express article)
A couple of other recent pieces on Tinariwen in the New York Times and S.F. Bay Guardian
Abderrahim Askouri — Moroccan Pop Innovator
In 2002, I spent a year in Morocco researching the emerging alternative music scene in Casablanca. Most of my attention went to the creation of a new genre of Moroccan music that soon carried the label “fusion.” Heavily influenced by French fusion bands, such as Gnawa Diffusion, Moroccan fusion blended Moroccan genres (cha’abi, gnawa, houari…) with rock, rap, salsa (and other international–mostly Black Atlantic–genres). Fusion also built upon earlier musical blendings. One of the roots of fusion was the music of the ’70s, which included the folk revival that included bands such as Nass el Ghiwane. Less remembered were solo urban artists, such as Abderrahim Askouri, described to me as a “musician’s musician” from Hay Mohammadi in Casablanca who influenced Nass el Ghiwane and other folk revival artists and also Khaled who spent a couple of years refining his chops in the clubs of Casa before returning to Oran and becoming a rai superstar.
Record producer Maurice El Baz played me some Askouri tracks but despite an evening searching cassette shops in popular quartiers of Casa, I never obtained my own copy of Askouri’s work. I just stumbled upon a posting by Abdel Halim El Hachimi on his Tales of Bradistan on Abderrahim Askouri and had to pass it on. Now, I got to get a copy of the cd Abdel so luckily found. A final note Abderrahim Askouri’s nephew Younes Askouri is a very talented singer-songwriter working in Casa today, a member of the 21st century fusion scene (YouTube clip below).
Abderrahim Askouri -- click on album cover to read the story
Another interesting article on Rai (from Hawgblawg)
Another interesting article on Rai that dispels or at least “problematizes” some of the widely-accepted ideas about Rai as a genre (at least our conceptions of Rai in the West). I don’t agree with everything Ted (Swedenburg) writes but most of it is spot-on. From Ted’s Hawgblawg, which is always interesting and often provocative — check it out!
Saturday, December 12, 2009
Some Myths and Misconceptions about Rai Music
There have been few posts on this blog of late in part because I’m trying to focus on the manuscript for my book, Radio Interzone. Lately I’ve been working on the chapter on rai music, to be based in part on articles published previously, some with Joan Gross and David McMurray others on my own. (See the bibliography at the end.) Lately I’ve been reading or rereading a number of articles on rai, both journalistic and academic, gathered over the last three years or so. In the course of doing so I’ve noticed a number of myths and misconceptions, that keep being repeated, over and over, in the literature. I attempt to correct the record here, as best I can. Or maybe I should say, I attempt to problematize the truisms that circulate, endlessly, about rai. Some of what I write re-states what I/we have written before. (And I must admit, I/we are responsible for circulating some of the errors.)
1. Rai means “opinion” in Arabic. From this claim flows an understanding that the lyrics of rai convey the opinion of the singer, in a fairly straightforward and unmediated way. Such “opinion,” moreover, is for the most part, direct, and, by implication, oppositional.
Rai of course literally means “opinion” or point of view. But in this musical genre, the significance of the word is not so much its literal meaning but that it functions, in many songs, as a word or phrase like “oh yeah,” “yeah, yeah,” or “tell it like it is.” That is, it serves to emphasize whatever point is being made. (see Mazouzi, 269) [to read on click here].
The Cheb Nasro Story — Interview of "Lovers' Rai" Star by Abdel Halim El Hachimi (Tales from Bradistan blog)
Lovers’ (or Sentimental) Rai is the least studied and least appreciated style of Rai outside of Algeria. It had none of the markers of the other Rai styles that captivated Western audiences and commentators — it was not “traditional,” a “music of protest,” and did not show “World Music eclecticism” — but it was the most popular style of Rai in the ’90s in Algeria. Abdel Halim El Hachimi’s interview of one of its most popular singers turns needed attention to Lovers’ Rai.
The Cheb Nasro Story
After the departure of Khaled and Cheb Mami to France at the end of the 1980s, two other singers became the figureheads of Rai music in Algeria. One was the late, great Cheb Hasni and the other was Cheb Nasro. These singers specialised in a newer and slower form of the music, which often became known as “sentimental Rai”. It is impossible to exaggerate the impact that Hasni and Nasro had across the Maghreb and both were enormous stars in their homeland. However, neither were signed by international record companies and their fame was almost solely among north Africans and their compatriots in France, Belgium and Holland.
With its lack of international crossover success, this new generation of Rai music did not gain the recognition it deserved. Partly this was because there was no promotional machine behind the artists and also because the musical production values had slipped quite a lot. Although there were still great musicians living in the country after the outbreak of civil war from 1991, it became increasingly difficult for artists to develop their careers and live performances dwindled away. What is clear is that amongst westerners, there barely exists any knowledge or understanding about the last twenty years or so of Rai music and the artists who made it.
A few days ago, I conducted an extensive interview with Cheb Nasro himself and he talked very candidly about his career and his experiences. This is a story that has never been told before and gives us an illuminating insight into the harsh reality of Rai music in Algeria. [To read more go to Tales from Bradistan]
Deciphering Culture
Deciphering Culture 