Appendix 6 - International Music Council

The Tetuan Lute Festival is aimed at highlighting the great lute virtuosi of the
Maghreb and the Arab world.
However, in order to be in harmony with the rest of the Western world, the
Moroccan Philharmonic Orchestra was created with the objective to popularize Western
classical music, presenting it as a universal culture to the Moroccan public.
Today, Morocco can show a number of achievements in the richest and most varied
musical trends, above all in the field of poetic songs which reflect the soul and the spirit of
the multi-ethnic Moroccan people.
Amazigh Song has been present always and everywhere; in a way it crystallizes the
heritage of the Berber people who for many years were dominated by the Arab-Muslim
authorities; the Berbers now are searching for their cultural identity in terms of language
and civilization, and they do this through the renaissance of their sleeping/dormant – or for
political and social reasons, passive - traditional arts. Amazigh Song is starting to bloom
thanks to the opening and tolerance by the others who accept it as such.
The Akkaf group e.g. distinguished itself though its research of the Amazigh music
heritage, by using instruments of popular and brotherhood music: guenbri, hajhuj gnawi,
rabab, small lute, darbuqa, tambourine, taârije and tbal (the Aîswas’ tambourine), rattles,
together with Western and oriental instruments, e.g. guitar, piano, ney and ūd.
The popular Arab song appeared in the 1940s with the remarkable artistic creativity
of the famous Houssine Slaoui (an engaged and satirical author, composer and performer)
who introduced this very Maghrebin musical genre. Since then, in the contact of the
Moroccan society in quest of independence and liberation from the colonial yoke, this new
style has developed into a typical Moroccan song, called “modern, of Egyptian tendency”.
It was preferred (or rather, imposed) for reasons of nationalism and cultural identity as was
the case of Andalusian music. For a long time, both musical styles were favoured in radio
and television programmes, Independence Day, galas and big festivals, like the Rabat
International Festival, the Mawazine Festival, “World Rhythms”, the Casablanca Festival
of Arab Song, the Marrakech Spring Festival and the Volubilis Festival. But this style will
disappear or at least suffer from globalization and from the new music trends which
embrace the Arab world and stifle those who try to keep it alive. The Megri music
movement, which in a way created the Arab World Music in the 1960s, used the Moroccan
ra’i rhythms, Arab melodies, and traditional instruments together with Western ones, in
order to obtain harmonious but universal music liked by Westerners and Arab youth alike.
Thus they put an end to the hegemony of the Egyptian pharaohs. The latter opted for a
different music inspired by “the Megri experience” (prestige oblige!) and reinforced in
particular by the style of the Nass El Ghiwane and the fast-expanding Maghrebin ra’i, in
order to respond to the aspiration of the new generations of the Arab countries subjugated
by the big Western stars.
The Nass El Ghiwane musicians drew on the traditional heritage of the popular arts
of Morocco, offering a musical genre sometimes entrancing and pleasing to Western ears
while playing on traditional instruments only: bendir, hajhuj, sentir and tbila (tambourine).
Finally, the Maghrebin ra’i is rising from its ashes like the Phoenix of Ancient
Greece; it is reviving the noble past of an exceptionally ‘hard’ music style, with its
remarkable artistic and literary reputation as to the frenetic, entrancing and bewitching
rhythms of the Reggadas; its very special, sincere and poetic expressions reflecting the
imagination of a people thirsty for liberty; its much appreciated Alawi war dances; and
finally its charismatic, pleasant and captivating popular songs and melodies which have
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