Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dlnhk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-01T00:51:10.063Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Embodying the Countryside in ʿAiṭa Ḥaṣbawiya (Morocco)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 December 2018

Alessandra Ciucci
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

As we left Safi and began driving along a stretch of country road on our way to Rabat, one of my female traveling companions asked me if I had a cassette of 'aiṭa on me. “Why?” I replied with a certain curiosity. “Oh …,” she continued, “I just feel like listening to it. I want to smell the soil (bghit nshdm t-trab), taste the countryside (bghit nduq l-ərubiya). ”I was struck by her answer, by how she had articulated the desire to listen to this genre of sung poetry by analogy to other senses. For her, listening to aiṭa meant to experience the countryside and, at the same time, to celebrate a rurality that for many Moroccans is an essential component of their identity. That day I did not have a cassette on me. However, the silence was soon broken by the opening verses of “Mal l-hbibi malu ‘lih” (what's wrong with my beloved, what's wrong with him); she and the others had begun singing, clapping, and rhythmically swaying their upper bodies as we continued to drive on that country road.

Type
Articles
Information
Yearbook for Traditional Music , Volume 44 , 2012 , pp. 109 - 128
Copyright
Copyright © 2012 by the International Council for Traditional Music

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

References Cited

Abdeljamil, Khadija 1993 “L'Énonciation dans la chanson populaire arabe de femmes au Maroc (chikhat)” PhD dissertation, Université Lumière.Google Scholar
Abu-Lughod, Lila 1986 Veiled Sentiments : Honor and Poetry in a Bedouin Society. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Aydoun, Ahmed 1995 Musiques du Maroc. Casablanca: Éditions Eddif.Google Scholar
Bahraoui, Hassan 2002 Fann al-'aiṭa fi al-maghrib: Musahama fi al-ta ‘rif. Rabat: Ittihad Kitab al-Maghrib.Google Scholar
Barthes, Roland 1977 “The Grain of the Voice.” In Image, Music, Text, 179–89. Trans. Stephen Heath. New York: Hill and Wang.Google Scholar
Belghazi, Taieb 2006 “Festivalization of Urban Spaces in Morocco.” Critiques: Critical Middle Eastern Studies 15/1: 97–107.Google Scholar
Bouhmid, Mohammed 1992 Interview with Omar Amarir, Kunuz, RTM.Google Scholar
Bouhmid, Mohammed 1995 “Innahum yuridun al ‘aiạ ka-dajij li-jami’ al-ḥushud.” al-Ittiḥad al-Ishtiraki (15 April): 6.Google Scholar
Boukous, Ahmed 1994 “Le champ culturel au Maroc: De quelques contradictions.” In L'interculturel au Maroc: Arts, langues, littératures et traditions populaires; Actes de la journée d'études organisée par le GEM et le DLLF, à la Faculté des lettres de Rabat, Février 1992, 83–99. Casablanca: Afrique Orient.Google Scholar
Caton, Steven C. 1985 “The Poetic Construction of Self.” Anthropological Quarterly 58/4: 141–51.Google Scholar
Ciucci, Alessandra 2008 “Poems of Honor, Voices of Shame: The ‘Aiṭa and the Moroccan Shikhat.” PhD dissertation, the Graduate Center, City University of New York.Google Scholar
Ciucci, Alessandra 2010 “De-orientalizing the ‘Aita and Re-orienting the Shikhat.” In French Orientalism: Culture, Politics, and the Imagined Other, ed. Hosford, Desmond and Wojtkowski, Chong J., 71–96. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Press.Google Scholar
Ciucci, Alessandra 2012 “'The Text Must Remain the Same': History, Collective Memory and Sung Poetry in Morocco.” Ethnomusicology 56/3: 476–504.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Colin, Georges S. 1994 Le dictionnaire Colin d'arabe dialectal marocain. 8 vols. Rabat: Éditions al Manahil.Google Scholar
Dirlik, Arif 2000 Postmodernity's Histories: The Past as Legacy and Project. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers.Google Scholar
Halstead, John P. 1969 Rebirth of a Nation: The Origins and Rise of Moroccan Nationalism, 1912–1944. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Heath, Jeffrey 2002 Jewish and Muslim Dialects of Moroccan Arabic. New York: Routledge Curzon.Google Scholar
Herzfeld, Michael 1986 Ours Once More: Folklore, Ideology, and the Making of Modern Greece. New York: Pella Publishing Company, Inc.Google Scholar
Hobsbawm, Eric, and Ranger, Terence 1983 Eds. The Invention of Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Joffé, E. G. H. 1985 “The Moroccan Nationalist Movement: Istiqlal, the Sultan, and the Country.” The Journal of African History 26/4: 289–307.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kapchan, Deborah 1996 Gender on the Market: Moroccan Women and the Revoicing of Tradition. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Laâbi, Abdellatif 1966 “Réalités et dilemmes de la culture nationale (I).” Anfsa/Souffles 4. http://www.seattleu.edu/souffles/s04/2_l.htm.Google Scholar
Meeker, Michael E. 1976 “Meaning and Society in the Near East: Examples from the Black Sea Turks and the Levantine Arabs.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 7/2: 243–70; 7/3: 382–422.Google Scholar
Ministère de la Culture 2001–2 Anthologie de la musique marocaine. 30 CDs. Produced by the Royaume du Maroc Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication and Maroc Telecom. Ahmed Aydoun, artistic director. Rabat.Google Scholar
Najmi, Hassan 2007 Ghina’ al-'diṭa: al-Sh ‘ir wa-l-musiqa taqlidiya fi al-maghrib. Casablanca: Dar Tubqal li-l-Nashr.Google Scholar
Olwage, Grant 2004 “The Class and Colour of Tone: An Essay on the Social History of Vocal Timbre.” Ethnomusicology Forum 13/2: 203–26.Google Scholar
Ouzri, Abdelwahed 1997 Le théâtre au Maroc: Structures et tendances. Casablanca: Éditions Toubkal.Google Scholar
Raggoug, ‘Allai 2000a al-Ghina’ al-Sh ‘dbi al-Maghribi: Anmat wa Tajalliyat. Rabat: Maktabat al-Talib.Google Scholar
Raggoug, ‘Allai 2000b “al-'Ayta: Chant du Maroc profond entre musique et histoire.” Horizons maghrébins 43:16–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Raggoug, ‘Allai 2001 al-Muqawama wa-aḥdath min al-tarikh al-ijtima ‘fi al-adab al-shafawi al-Maghribi (1890–1956). Rabat: al-Mandubiyah al-Samiyah li-Qudama’ al-Muqawimin wa-A ‘ḍa’ Jaysh al-Taḥrir.Google Scholar
Sabir, Mohamed, and Jelloun, Hassan Ben 2006 “Arab Traditional Soil Classification: A Moroccan Case.” Encyclopedia of Soil Science, ed. Lal, Rattan, 121–26. London: Taylor and Francis.Google Scholar
Soum-Pouyalet, Fanny 2007 Le corps, la voix, le voile: Cheikhat marocaines. Paris: CNRS.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tolbert, Elizabeth 2001 “The Enigma of Music, the Voice of Reason: ‘Music,’ ‘Language’ and Becoming Human.” New Literary History 32/3: 451–65.Google Scholar
Touzani, Amina 2003 La culture et la politique culturelle au Maroc. Casablanca: Croisée des Chemins.Google Scholar
Triki, Hamid, et al. 1993 La colline des potiers: Histoire d'une ville et de sa poterie. Casablanca: Edition Lak International.Google Scholar
Willoughby, Heather 2000 “The Sound of Han: P'ansori, Timbre and a Korean Ethos of Pain and Suffering.” Yearbook for Traditional Music 32:17–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar