The stash abides! YOU WANT THIS TAPE. You should start downloading it now, then come back and read the blogpost.
OK? Let's continue...
This is a tape of Hamadsha songs, apparently from the mid '90s. According to the pixelated Arabic transcription on my homemade j-card (printed from my first computer using my first Arabic word processing program), this cassette was on the Fassiphone label, credited to a group called Ta'ifa al Hamdouchia - Qubbat Sidi Ali ben Hamdouch. I wonder if the group includes Moqaddem Abderrahim Amrani, whose late-90s album on the same label remains one of the stash's most popular offerings.
This is a fantastic album. A short invocation and a shorter coda bookend two looooong tracks of Hamadcha songs. The opening invocation track is just weird - creepy new-agey synthesizer and what could be a guinbri but is hard to distinguish beneath the dripping layers of overdone ambience.
But it's over quickly, and you plunge straight into the organic heaviness of buzzy harraz clay goblet drums driving 10/8 rhythms underblaring ghaita oboes, group male vocals, and the celebratory zgharit ululations of the attendant womenfolk. This is unrushed, unrelenting, insistent stuff. You know it's building toward something frenzied, but it takes it's sweet time. By the end of side 1, you get a sense of where it's going.
Side 2, however, does not continue this progression. In performance, Side 2's long suite of songs would probably precede Side 1's suite: The ghaitas are absent, the songs feature passages of solo singing in addition to the group vocals, the lyrics seem directed to the Hamadcha's eponym (Sidi Ali ben Hamdouch) and the final song of Side 2 is the opening song of side 1. I thought about reversing the running order of the tracks, but I'm kind of digging the way Side 2's songs follow the Side 1's songs. After 20 minutes of ghaitas blaring, theirabsence leaves sonic space for the vocals to become starkly prominent and memorable. And the opening invocation and closing "coda" of ghaitas seem deliberately placed. So I left the running order as-is, while naming the 2 long tracks "Part 1" and "Part A" to honor the ambiguity.
I had no recollection of having a copy of this. I found it while looking for some good Gnawa music to offer up before Chaabane turns into Ramadan. It was tucked away on the flip side of a Gnawa tape I dubbed years ago. Hope you enjoy it!
Ta'ifa al Hamdouchia - Qubbat Sidi Ali ben Hamdouch (Fassiphone cassette)
Instead of poring through the Lomax collection yesterday, I decided to pore through a stash of about 75 cassettes I inherited from a friend recently. Separated out the Maghrebi music tapes from the Middle Eastern ones and the Islamic lectures. I was still jonesing for some chaâbi, and scored with a swell tape of El Bhiri. Yala.fm describes him as a chaâbi artist from Casablanca. The tracks here stay mostly to the aita side of the chaâbi field, with the exception of track 5, which is more of a call-response percussion band-style rave-up.
The tape is missing the first couple minutes of track 3, where someone inadvertently (or advertently?) taped some interesting but completely non-sequitur Middle Atlas tamazight song on top.
I wanted to post more chaâbi after my last chaâbi post, but didn't find anything that inspired me. Like I said last week, my fave chaâbi stays pretty close to the rural, aita end of the field (rather than the Andalusian end, the smooth orchestrated end, or the pop-rai end). I'll try to dig out a good Stati tape soon. In the meantime, here's some more bitchin' aita haouzia.
After scanning the shell, I realized that this tape comes from the same production house as my last aita haouzia post - Edition Atif, or Aâtiphone, based in ... Kelaat es-Sraghna? I've been thru Sraghna a bunch of times, since it's the biggest city on the road between Marrakech and Beni Mellal, my 2 main perches in Morocco. But never had any reason to stop there (except for one time when it was Ramadan and time to break fast - the bus parked and everyone was able able to get that important bowl of harira...) At any rate, I don't know if these performers are from Sraghna or Marrakech - I would guess Marrakech. The other haouzia group on this label was from Marrakech, and the little picture in the top-left corner of the j-card and on the spine is of the Menara - a royal-summer-house-turned-public-garden in Marrakech.
Track titles on the j-card didn't seem to match the lyrics I heard on the tape, so I didn't transcribe them. The front panel reads "The star of Haouzi song". And track 2 is seamlessly edited together from the end of side A and the beginning of side B by yours truly.
Continuing with my recent set of trance brotherhood music tapes from the Meknes area (after Aissawa and Gnawa), here's a tape of Hamadsha tunes. The performer is from Fez, but I picked up the tape in Meknes in '99.
The Hamadsha are followers of Sidi Ali ben Hamdush, a saint whose shrine is in the Jbel Zerhun mountainous area north of Fez and Meknes. They specialize in working with people possessed by the notorious jinniya Lalla Aisha. The Gnawa also perform music for Aisha's trances, and it is derived from the 5/4 melodies heard here. (Gnawa versions of these tunes, which they call "Hamdushiya", can be heard elsewhere on this blog.) Lalla Aisha is usually identified as Aisha Qandisha, but this is contested by some, including the performer featured on this tape.
The performer, Abderrahim Amrani, is the muqaddem of a Fez branch of the brotherhood as well as a versatile musician proficient in a number of genres. See yala.fm for his biography (and some questionable pop versions of Moroccan trance tunes.) Or check out more tunes and video on the Fez Hamadsha website or on their MySpace page!
The music on this tape features the guinbri (not the large guinbri used by the Gnawa, but a smaller variety) and the large clay goblet drum known as gwal, along with clapping and singing. Not heard here is the ghaita oboe, which the Hamadsha use in some parts of their ceremony.
BTW - thanks for all your comments recently - I haven't had a chance to reply to all, but hope to do so soon. I do appreciate the feedback and the conversation!
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UPDATE - JAN 14, 2013 - Happy to say that Mr. Abderrahim Amrani has seen this blog post and shared more information about Lalla Aisha with followers of the blog! Please see here.
In the weeks following the Eid al Miloud, pilgrimage celebrations (moussem-s) are held all over Morocco at the shrines of local awliya saints. Possibly the biggest of these celebrations is the moussem in Meknes for L-Hadi ben Aissa, eponym of the Aissawa brotherhood. Pilgrims from across the region and across the country descend on Meknes for a 2 weeks of devotion and renewal, and nights of trance music.
Here are 2 tapes of Aissawa music I picked up in Meknes ca. '99. Unlike the released CDs of Aissawa music available in da West (featuring groups from Meknes, Marrakech, and Fes), these tapes make no pretense of presenting a balanced overview of the Aissawa ritual. That is, they don't include any of the lovely sung poetry in honor of the Hadi ben Aissa that would typically open a ritual performance. They cut straight to the chase, hitting the ground running with with blaring ghaita oboes and pounding tbel drums!
I'm not familiar enough with Aissawa music to know if these tunes are from the trance repertoire or from the street/processional repertoire. Whichever it is, these are some serious long jams - the group riffs it non-stop for 3+ sides of these 2 volumes:
Most of Vol 2 side 2 is taken up with a suite of melodies in 5/4 - it sounds like the rhythm used by the Hamadsha brotherhood.
If anyone can identify any of the melodies or the context of these recordings, please let me know!
At any rate, this is definitely a live performance - either the musicians, the microphone, or all of them are in motion - the oboes and drums change places in the mix constantly during the recording. Add to that some weird phasing that carries on through most of the tape, just the right amount of crowd noise, chattering and occasional chanting, and you've got an unintentionally awesome Brian Jones Presents the Pipes of Pan at Joujouka vibe!
Continuing with another aita post, and vintage stuff too. This tape is another vinyl-to-cassette dub, purchased from a vendor in Rabat in the mid-'90s.
He is regarded by many experts as the renovator and modernizer of the art of Aïta. "Before Bouchaïb the Aïta was limited to being a traditional country song, tribal and pastoral. He succeeded in urbanizing the art by maintaining the lyrics while developing more sophisticated musical arrangements, says Hassan Bahraoui, author of "The Art of the Aïta in Morocco".
Bouchaïb formed, with violinist Marshal Kibbou and Bent Chikha Louqid the star-troupe of the 50s and 60s. At first, nothing predisposed this colonial French lawyer's accountant and native of Derb Dalia (in the old medina of Casablanca) to become the darling of the Moroccan pop music. It was at a chance meeting in the 1940's with two bourgeois fans of chikhate, Benjdiya and Ben M'sik... that he attended performances of the stars at the time, Hajja Rouida and Arjouniya, at moussem-s and weddings. "It was from there that Bouchaïb choose his vocation as a chikh," says Mr. Bahraoui.
With independence [1956], festivity gains the four corners of the kingdom to celebrate the return of Mohammed V and regained freedom. The artist increased his appearances and made his first recordings for Boudraouaphone and Baïdaphone. "He did fantastic work on the repertoire. He excelled in Marsawi aita-s and made the songs of Abda available to the general public. Finally, Bouchaïb would improvise his own successful aita-s that are still performed today, such as "Dabayji", "Milouda bent Driss" and "Alkass a Abbas," the professor emphasized...
Bouchaïb died in 1964 at the age of 35.
Although the quote states that Bouchaib el Bidaoui chose the profession of shikh, it would be more accurate to say that he chose the profession of shikha - he sang women's songs in a woman's vocal range, and performed wearing women's clothing. He was not the first Moroccan performer to do this, but was the first to reach national stardom in this role, in the age of mechanical reproduction.
The style of aita represented here is different from that of my previous aita posts. If my memory is correct, this style, aita marsawiya, is associated with the coastal region around Casablanca and El Jadida. In addition to the viola, oud, and bendir, the darbuka is used here.
I don't see any Bouchaib el Bidaoui video footage on the web (though I could swear I've seen some before, perhaps on Moroccan TV.) However, if you close your eyes and listen to Khalid from the Ouled Bouazzaoui group, you could swear you're hearing Bouchaib el-Bidaoui - he's a dead ringer. But don't close your eyes - Khalid's a great performer and plays the viola as well as sings (though he doesn't wear women's clothes).
Here are a couple of websites with a bunch of streaming audio of Bouchaib el Bidaoui:
Some songs on my tape can be found in the above links - some in different recorded versions, some duplicates of what are here. Some have less surface noise than my versions, though bitrate is not always so good. A few of the songs on my tape I couldn't find anywhere else on the web, including the famous "Daba Iji". Can't find my original cassette j-card for this, so track titles are best guesses or cribbed from elsewhere:
BTW - More quintuple meter featured here in this tape ("Lli Bgha Habibou").
BTW2 - The marsawi version of "Kharboucha" (heard on this tape and in the video clip) opens with a 42-beat rhythmic cycle. This differs from the hasbawi version of "Kharboucha" performed by Fatna bent el-Houcine here, which opens with a 40-beat cycle.
A scratchy viola, a few buzzy hand drums, and some lady vocalists (or men emulating them) who milk 3 or 4 piercing pitches all night long. It's aita haouzia - rural Arabic song from the region of Marrakech. This is some deep, raw country music. No darbuka-s here - just the down-home buzz of the little clay ta'rija and the bendir frame drum.
The vocalist is the late Shikha Makhloufia. I believe she's the main vocalist featured in this clip:
The viola player is Shikh Hassan el Dariouki (I've also seen it written "Darouki"). His troupe Oulad El Haouz is regularly featured at national festivals and on state-run TV to represent this style of music. (On good days I also used to find them on the Djemaa el Fna in Marrakech.) Oulad El Haouz is an all-male group, but the men have no trouble singing the same 3 or 4 piercing high pitches that the women sing:
For you lovers of quintuple meter, you'll find a couple of pieces in 5/4 (or 10/8 or whatever) on this tape (tracks 2 & 3).
1) Suwweli f-Riyadu
2) L-Khadem
3) Mul Shi'ba
4) Rouidia
BTW - Track 2 stretched across the break between sides A and B of the cassette. I did my best to merge them into a single track, though the fadeout was a challenge.
Marrakchi old-school women's party music - rollicking call-and-response singing with funky stratified rhythms on a variety of buzzy drums plus a brake drum or tea tray for some metal clang. This sort of group typically has some songs that roll from start to finish in the typical Moroccan 6/8. They have another type that begins in 7/8 and moves to 5/4, with the same melody stretched to fit into the new meter! Here's a whole tape of those, c.1990.