Studio Ahwach: Othmane Azoulid - Ahouache N'tfrkhine

It's been a minute since we posted any ahwach - the communal song and dance performance tradition from Tachelhit-speaking regions of Morocco. Ahwach can take on very different forms from place to place or from occasion to occasion. Today's cassette presents an ahwach recording by artists from Tafraoute, led by the singer Othmane Azoulid. We actually posted a tape (now re-upped in FLAC) featuring Azoulid back in 2013. That tape featured an all-male ensemble. Today's tape is an ahwach n'tferkhine - a type of ahwach that features a seated male drum group accompanying a group of female singers. (The work tfrkhine means "young girls" in Tachelhit.) There are quite a few videos on YouTube of ahwach n'tferkine. In some varieties, women's heads are adorned by ornate headdresses. In others, their heads are completely covered by individual white sheets. And in others, as pictured on this cassette's j-card, the women stand shoulder to shoulder in a line and a single long cloth covers all of their heads.

This cassette contains a studio recording of ahwach songs, and the audio quality is very good. Particularly nice is the stereo separation between the different bendir frame drums, which take turns providing rhythmic punctuations. (Actually, on second listen, I think this is just a single bendir, just being panned left, right, or center in the mix to liven up the mix.) And the âwad flutes coming in at the end of some tracks are the icing on top of a lovely cake of naqqus, clapping, bendirs, and zgharits (ululations). 

Ahouache N'tfrkhine أحواش نتفرخين
B'riasat Lfnane Azoulid برئاسة: الفنان أزوليض
[Directed by The Artist Azoulid] (Othmane Azolid)
Box Music cassette 
2011

A1 Ahan Aya Zoulid Nsherek Tamount أهان أيا زوليض نشرك تامونت
A2 Abou Lhawa أبو الهوى
B1 Atbir Rzmed Irriche أتبير رزمد الريش
B2 Ayih Ayan Iaazan Darnaghi أييه أيان إعزان دارنغي

FLAC | 320

3 hours of Gnawa music from 1966

Those of you with a taste for field recordings may enjoy perusing the online collection of CREM (Centre de Recherche en Ethnomusicologie), housing the audio archives of the CNRS and the Musée de l’Homme. Much of this vast audio archive of commercial and unpublished recordings is available for online listening.

I'm currently enjoying a remarkable collection of recordings made by one Mohammed Aït Youssef in Marrakech in 1966, featuring over 3 hours of Gnawa music:

http://archives.crem-cnrs.fr/archives/collections/CNRSMH_I_1968_021/

The online documentation does not indicate the name of the performer, but I believe it is the Gnawi Ahmed ben Lahcen.

He can be heard in some of Cafe Matich's YouTube uploads of recordings from Marrakech's Djemaa el Fna plaza:



It is certainly the same Gnawi that is heard in Gerard Kremer's recordings for Arion (released 1975):



Some of the recordings in the CNRS collection appear to have been made in the Djemaa el Fna plaza. Others, perhaps not - it's difficult to say. At any rate, it's a great collection of recordings - a lot of Ouled Bambara and Negsha songs, some with clapping, some with qarqaba, a few tracks of drumming and qarqaba-ing. (Almost no mluk trance songs, though.) There are also a few tracks of odds and ends. 08-03 features the bells of Djemaa el Fna water sellers. 07-01 is a drum and qarqaba song featuring the ismkhan (also known as âbid chleuh - Berber-speaking Gnawa who have a repertoire completely separate from that of the more well-known Arabophone Gnawa), and 07-02 is entitled "Solo de flûte Gnawa". The latter track sounds to me like an instance of the Soussi Berber style of âwad flute. Perhaps it's a Gnawi musician who doubles on flute - I've never heard of a discrete Gnawi flute tradition or repertoire, but the world is full of musical surprises, so perhaps I'm wrong!

I couldn't find any information about the researcher Mohamed Ait Youssef, what sort of research he was doing, or how his recordings ended up in the CNRS archive. The archive contains other recordings of his dating from1965 and 1968. These recordings, also from Marrakech, feature several different genres (as well as a few more Gnawa tracks). Whatever his story may have been, it's wonderful that he left us such extensive recordings, and that CNRS has shared them online.

CNRS Collection: Maroc, Marrakech; Musique de confrérie. Enregistrements sonores inédits réalisés par Mohammed Aït Youssef au Maroc (Marrakech), en 1966: http://archives.crem-cnrs.fr/archives/collections/CNRSMH_I_1968_021/

Awad Mtougha - More of That Down Home Moroccan Fife & Drum

Here's some more of that good âwad-driven ahwach music. Âwad are the high-pitched flutes seen above, Mtougha (or Mtouga) is the area of Morocco from which this particular ahwach style appears to originate, and ahwach is the communal Berber song-dance-singing-drumming genre that differs from region to region in Tachelhit-speaking areas of Morocco.

Here's a bit of a staged performance of the Mtouga ahwach. In addition to the âwad flutes and bendir frame drums, you can see (or at least hear) the tam-tam or tbilat (pair of small kettle drums) and naqqus (struck metal idiophone). And dig the stepping, clapping, and shoulder-shimmying!



Track 5 of this tape is the same as Track 1, but slowed down just a tad. Or Track 1 is the same as Track 5, sped up a bit. They're both here, since I couldn't figure out which was the truer pitch.

Awad Mtougha (Audio Star Cassette)
Track 1 (of 5)

Get it all here.

100% Tamghra! - Soussi Wedding Pop

Yep, its 100% Tamghra, according to the j-card! Tamghra means "wedding" in Tachelhit. The Arabic tag on the left side reads something like "Songs for the sweetest events and Amazigh weddings."

The music is pretty poppy, but many of the timbres are drawn from long-standing Soussi Berber traditions including ahwach (âwad flutes and punchy bendir-s, and punctuations of interlocking clapping) as well as the amarg tradition of the rwayes musicians (namely, the scratchy horsehair rrbab fiddle and the naqqus metal percussion instrument). The electric guitar sometimes sounds like the small Berber guinbri, and sometimes plays righteous, slippery, pentatonic runs.

The musical group is called "Tisslatin N'Ait Baamran" (The Brides of Ait Baâmran). Here's a swell videoclip of the group in action, with wedding ambiance in abundance:


Ait Baâmran is a group tribes located around the area of Sidi Ifni, south of Agadir and Tiznit. The j-card also gives the name "Habiba", and a web search reveals that the singer is known more fully as Habiba Tabaamrant. (Etymological note: Berber nouns become feminine with the addition of "t" at the beginning and end of the word. Thus, "Tabaâmrant" is the feminine of "Baâmran".)

The singer on this tape should not be confused with the very famous singer Fatima Tabaamrant, who sings in the more classic style of the rwais. Habiba works more in a pop mode, as evidenced by this highly entertaining sketch/videoclip:


Track 4 (of 4)


Get it all here.

---

UPDATE:

Gary at Bodega Pop also posted some nice Soussi pop earlier this weekend. And if you like the sound of brides, Brian at Awesome Tapes shared a tape from another Brides group a while back.

Ahwach al-Âwad - Moroccan Fife and Drum

Another ahwach cassette for ya this week. As I mentioned in my last post, there are many different regional forms of ahwach. I don't know exactly where this one comes from, but the cassette production house if in Agadir. Unlike last week's offering, which was heavy on the vocal solos, this ahwach tape features no singing whatsoever. Instead, this music is driven by a pair of riffy, high-pitched âwad flutes. And as with other ahwach-s, you get a slew of punchy bendir-s, plus lots of rhythmic footstepping, handclapping, and raucous exclamations. I hear some sort of naqqus (metal ideophone) here as well.

In some parts of the world, fife and drum ensembles are a favored type of outdoor music for parades and processions. Ahigh-pitched flute is an ideal instrument to cut through the onslaught of loud drums in an outdoor setting. In other locales, the preferred instrument for this setting is the oboe/shawm - another shrill sound that can be heard outdoors above a battery of drums.

In Morocco, the ghaita (oboe) and tbel (barrel drum) are the typical instruments for an outdoor procession. While the ghaita is sufficiently shrill and piercing for outdoor venues, flutes in Morocco tend to be low-pitched and breathy - the gasba flutes played by Jilala musicians are a good example.

The âwad flutes heard on this tape, however, have that clear high sound that is perfect for the drum-heavy outdoor ahwach. The pentatonic, repeating melodies and shrill sound of these âwad tunes remind me of American blues fife and drum tunes, though the Berber rhythms are a little more angular than the rolling blues rhythms:


Ahwach al-Âwad - Ûmar Dahouss: Alhan Amazighia Jdida wa Khalda (Berber tunes, New and Immortal)


Track 4 (of five)

Get it all here.