Traditional music and dance
The region around Marrakech and Essaouira has very similar musical traditions to the rest of Morocco. Here, too, it's not uncommon to hear aïta, that specifically Moroccan rural song, full of improvisations and built around the shrill cries of female singers and the repetitive sound of tambourines. First heard at the end of the 19th century, it has been seminal in the country ever since, and has notably spawned the famous modern chaâbi music.
In Morocco, Berber music plays a key role in the country's musical landscape and cultural heritage. Particularly in Marrakech. Recognizable by its repetitive chants and intense rhythms, and inseparable from dance, Berber music is a treasure for the eye and ear. Its most common expression is undoubtedly the dakka marriakchia (typical of the city of Marrakech), a sacred music with bubbling rhythms and bewitching chants, which is very popular at weddings. Another pillar of Berber culture is the famous ahidous. Both music and dance, this collective celebration sees men and women elbowing each other and swaying back and forth, forming supple, undulating rounds, accompanied by songs, always choral, always iterative, centered around the rhythms of the bendir, the large tambourine with a wooden frame and stretched goatskin. The big name in the genre is the group Izenzaren, and closer to home, you can sometimes come across them in the creations of French-Moroccan artist Hindi Zahra. The other great traditional Berber choreography is the ahouache, an exhausting but magnificent dance in which the women, huddled together, frantically encircle the musicians and undulate their pelvis to a rhythm that gradually accelerates under the impulse of the bendir. In the High Atlas region, taskiwin is a martial dance named after the richly decorated horn worn by each dancer: the tiskt. Encouraging social cohesion and harmony, taskiwin is danced in rows or circles, shaking shoulders to the rhythms of tambourines and flutes.
It's impossible to travel to Morocco without hearing the music of the Gnaouas. These descendants of Black African slaves have carefully preserved their melodic heritage, and generation after generation continue to play these hypnotic, heady melodic motifs, calling for trance. Gnaoui music travels far and wide, regularly crossing Moroccan borders and fusing with genres from all over the world - jazz, blues, reggae and electro. This traditional aesthetic, constantly renewed, is paradoxically one of the country's most vibrant and modern. Its great masters - known as "mâalems" - are Mahmoud Guinia (from Essaouira), the star musician who once collaborated with Pharoah Sanders; Maâlem Abdelkader Amlil, a virtuoso on the guembri (a long lute with two or three strings) who has played regularly in France; and Abdellah Boulkhair El Gourd, one of the most famous exponents of Gnaoui culture. Today, Gnaoua music is in the capable hands of the young guard, represented by Mehdi Nassouli, a gifted musician and guembri specialist, and Asmaa Hamzaoui, also a virtuoso on the instrument, overturning the long-standing male prerogative in the field.
In France, the Orchestre National de Barbès has played it extensively, blending it with jazz, funk and reggae under the impetus of its founder: the Marrakchi Aziz Sahmaoui. The Gnawa Music Of Marrakesh compilation, released in 2022 on Berlin label Zehra, offers an ideal overview of the genre.
Otherwise, the must-see event in the discipline is of course the Festival de Musiques Gnaoua d'Essaouira, usually held in June. It's an opportunity to see the best Gnaoua artists, both stars and young talents, at numerous concerts (some of which are free).
As mystical as their music, Gnaoua dance is spectacular, punctuated by acrobatics, jumps and intense twirling. It usually ends in a trance. Equally impressive is the guedra, or hand dance, in which a dancer, surrounded by veils and crouched in the center of a circle of musicians, rises in syncopated, accelerated spasms, beating an imaginary tambourine with her hands, then falls back, exhausted, gradually throwing off her veils.
Popular music
The source of all Moroccan folk music is the melhoun. Dating back to the 12th century, this originally purely vocal poetry was enriched over time by the oud or guembri, before welcoming percussion instruments. It was from these realistic poems about life and love that chaâbi, the Moroccan popular music par excellence, blossomed. Traversing the whole of North Africa (Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt...), each country cultivating its own version, Moroccan chaâbi combines Arabo-Andalusian influences, lively rhythms and light-hearted lyrics that have made it an essential party and dance music (which is why it is also enjoyed at weddings). In Morocco, we tend to divide the genre into two families: chaâbi-malhoun, formally close to its Algerian cousin, and modern, more "pop" chaâbi, which has encompassed Moroccan variety music since the 1980s.
To get a better idea of chaâbi, we need only turn to its great interpreters. Houcine Slaoui, the modernizer and father of Moroccan chaâbi music, Abdelaziz Stati, the star, Najat Aatabou, the "Lioness of the Atlas" and Mustapha Bourgogne. The great Marrakchi name in chaâbi music is Tahour, a successful singer who has toured the world to meet the Moroccan diaspora.
Chaâbi has stood the test of time, evolving and transforming with each generation appropriating it to offer a fresh interpretation. It lives with the times, and today it is enriched by electronic rhythms, pop and autotune, as can be heard in the tracks by Zina Daoudia, the current queen of modern Moroccan chaâbi.
Current music
As is the case almost everywhere on earth, the great contemporary trend that has conquered Morocco is rap. Deeply rooted in the country, it has become one of the major trends, now enjoying its golden age. The pioneers are H-Kayne, a mythical 1990s group and one of the few (if not the only) in its field to be awarded the National Award Medal. Icons who, alongside respected names such as Casa Crew and Bigg, initiated the first wave of Moroccan hip-hop.
Since then, the scene has produced a host of stars: Shayfeen, Toto, Madd, 7Liwa, LBenj and Nessyou, the prodigal son of Marrakech, have all imposed their own unique, unconventional style, racking up millions of views on YouTube. These are real phenomena that the world's media are snapping up. A mouthpiece for young people, the genre is also popular because it is a privileged vehicle for their questioning, openly tackling drugs, alcohol, sex... Anyone looking to meet the young musical guard on stage would be well advised to go to one of these three events in Marrakech that are more than worth the detour: the Oasis festival, held in the suburbs of Marrakech, Atlas Electronic, held in an ecolodge in La Palmeraie, and finally the Moga festival, three days of electronic and digital festivities between the medina of Essaouira and its pretty beach, inviting both international and Moroccan labels.
