Toudadine - Songs of Lhoucine Amentag, Tagroupit-Style

This tape comes to us courtesy of Peter at the still active, still great มนต์รักเพลงไทย blog. The group is called Toudadine. I gather that the word toudadine is the female plural in Tachelhit for the Barbary sheep (ewes). The male plural for these sheep (rams) is oudaden, which is of course the name of a renowned Soussi group that originated the tagroupit style in the late 1970s/early 1980s. 

We posted about Oudaden and tagroupit here back in 2015. Briefly, tagroupit originated in the 1980s as a sort of return to traditional Soussi rhythms and melodies as well as love songs. It was seen as a "return" in light of the 1970s innovations of the earlier, more eclectic and political tazenzart style that originated with the group Izenzaren. This 1980s return to traditional melodies by Soussi artists reminds me of the rise of new chaabi groups in 1980s Casablanca like Noujoum Bourgogne and Toulati el Farah who were also "returning" to traditional sources and lyrical themes in distinction to the 1970s proliferation of eclectic and political groups like Nass el Ghiwane.

This cassette by Toudadine is in a sort of pop-tagroupit style. It features the typical electric guitar and banjo, but 3 of the 4 tracks also feature a keyboard, and the rhythm sounds like programmed beats throughout. The group is fronted by what sounds like 2 female singers singing in unison, with a group of men as choral responders. The j-card flap reads:

أغاني متنوعة - كلمات وتلحين الحاج الحسين أمنتاك
Various Songs – Lyrics and Composition by Lhaj Lhoucine Amentag

Lhoucine Amentag (not to be confused with Hmad Amentag) was a well-known singer and composer in the rwayes/amarg tradition. My ear thinks that the first song on this Toudadine tape may not be one of Amentag's: it seems to have more of a pop structure than the other 3 songs, and the lyrics keep coming back to the word "Toudadine", so I wonder if it might be an original song of the Toudadine group.

I didn't find any information about the group online. There are several video clips of a Toudadine group uploaded by Production Disco, but they are clearly a different group - the female vocals are in a different register, it seems about 20 years removed from the group in our cassette, and the songs are very poppy, despite the traditional banjo/guitar accompaniment. (The commenters on the video clips of this group are 50% complaints about their clothes and 50% defending them for having nice voices, despite their terrible clothes. E.g., here.)

Google identified one of the songs on this cassette as "Ahbib Nyan Zound Lkhatam", credited to a "Toudadine Amazigh". Perhaps LVEM rebranded the recordings with this name to avoid confusion with the other fashion-challenged Toudadine group 😅.

Speaking of Rais Lhoucine Amentag, you can find a swell cassette of his over at Moroccan Tapes and another one at TRAD & FOLK MUSIC ON 33RPM & TAPES. I used one of the tracks from the Moroccan Tapes cassette in a mix I recently produced for Radio Is A Foreign Country called "Buzz, Rattle & Scratch: Grainy Timbres of Moroccan Music". Check that out HERE - it's a buzzy, rattling, scratchy good time!

Toudadine تودادين
La Voix El Maarif cassette 461 صَوت لامعَارف

FLAC | 320

Inerzaf - The Classic Line-up with Hamid and Lahcen

best guess personnel, clockwise from top center: Lahcen Bizenkad - lead vocal, bendir; Mohamed Abdelghani - guitar, vocal; Hassan Batch - tam tam, vocal; Boubker Ouchtain - bendir, vocal; Hamid Baih (Hamid Inerzaf) - banjo, vocal.

Today's tape comes to you courtesy of Mr Tear, curator of the Snap, Crackle & Pop blog and host of the The Junk Shop radio program. It's a good one, too - a vintage tape from the group Inerzaf (or Inrzaf). Thanks, Mr T!

Inerzaf ("Wedding Guests") came together in the early-to-mid-1980s in the area of Agadir. Like tagroupit contemporaries Oudaden and Ait Lâati, Inerzaf were inspired by the wave of 70s groups like Izenzaren, Archach and Ousman, but drew more heavily on Soussi Berber musical sources, such as the amarg/rwayes tradition. And like Oudaden and Ait Lâati, Inerzaf used the distinctive combination of electric guitar and banjo.

The most renowned version of the group seems to be the one including both composer/singer/bendir player Lahcen Bizenkad and banjoist Hamid Baih. A highlight of this line-up is Hamid's virtuosic banjo playing, which is universally praised in online video comments. This version of the group was together from the mid/late 80s to around 1995. They are pictured on the j-card above and are featured in the live video embedded below:



All members of the group remained active after they split in the mid-1990s. Hamid and Lahcen both lead groups to this day, and the others have done so over the years as well. All of them use the name Inerzaf, and formations often feature more than one member of the earlier group (e.g., Inerzaf Hamid, Inerzaf Lahcen Bizenkad, Inerzaf Boubker, Inerzaf Brothers, Inerzaf Family...)

Inrzaf (انرزاف) Nassiriphone cassette NP183
A1) Ahinou Madrigh Zine - احنو مدويغ الزين - Iskert Lehouz Uwuday - إسكرت الحوز ؤوداي
A2) Allah Allah Ijra Ghikad - الله الله إجرا غكاد

B1) Yan Kirn Zine - يان كرن الزين
B2) Aoulinou Sber Idagh - اولينو صبر يداغ
B3) Samhatagh Nsemhek - صمحتغ نصمحك
B4) Oufighd Ameksa - الفغد أمكسا

Get it all here.

Sources: My info about Inerzaf comes primarily from three online musician biographies here, here, and here. Apologies for any errors or omissions.

Tagroupit in the House - Oudaden Live at Ksar al Andalus, Agadir

Well here's another Moroccan live album from La Voix el Maarif! This one is from the Soussi group Oudaden. Unlike our last live album from LVEM, which was recorded in Canada, this one was recorded in Morocco. According to the Arabic text on the spine and shell, this is a "live artistic soirée with Oudaden at the Ksar al Andalus in Agadir."

According to Anir at amazighnews.net, Oudaden recorded their first album for LVEM in 1985. (Perhaps this is it? It does say "Volulme (sic) 1".) The author characterizes Oudaden's artistic direction as being different from that of earlier groups from the 1970s such as Izenzaren. That earlier style, which came to be called Tazenzaret (i.e., in the manner of Izenzaren), was characterized both by its "revolutionary" lyrics and by the novel musical compositions of Igout Abdelhadi, who incorporated non-Soussi rhythms and melodies.

Oudaden, on the other hand, represented a return to traditional Soussi rhythms and melodies, albeit with the use of the electric guitar alongside the banjo. Oudaden also specialized in love songs. This style - love songs, traditional Soussi melodies and rhythms, with a somewhat modernized ensemble - came to be known as "Tirubba" (possibly "in the manner of a rub3a quartet"?) or "Tagroupit" (in the manner of a groupe - i.e., a modern ensemble). Oudaden group member Mohamed Jemoumekh, describes these styles as "le chaabi n tchelhit" (Berber chaâbi).

There's rather a lot of tape hiss on this one - I tried to roll off some of it in the EQ. There's loads more Oudaden over at Yala, if you want to sample some other, more hi-fi recordings of theirs.

By the way, the group name Oudaden refers to the bighorned Barbary sheep native to the Atlas mountains.

Oudaden - Live at Ksar al Andalus, Agadir (LVEM 126)
Track 2 (of 4)

Get it all here.

Like Chaâbi, Tagroupit seems to be continuing its popularity. Moroccan Tape Stash blog follower Owen Buck traveled in southern Morocco earlier this year and was treated, while dining, to a musical performance from an amateur Tachelhit group. I couldn't tell you whether the style is more tazenzaret or more tagroupit, but the great sound of banjos, drums and pentatonic melodies is undeniable. Enjoy some of this performance here: