Trending classic: the cultural register of Moroccan Malhun poetry

ABSTRACT

This article demonstrates how the heteroglossia of malḥūn performances affects Moroccans as they negotiate identities and re-imagine Moroccan society. Performers' poetic devices and interpretations of the genre facilitate a process of representing and ’voicing’ social groups within contemporary Moroccan public discourse. I apply Bakhtinian dialogic analysis to address voices of stability that reinforce social structures of authority (‘centripetal’) and voices of diversification (‘centrifugal’) that re-envision diversity in Moroccan society. Artistic innovations, such as theatrical productions of a narrative malḥūn poem, make space for rethinking Moroccan identity. Malḥūn emerges from this study as a literary and cultural form that functions as a cultural register to inform public discourses regarding the nature of Moroccan identity.

KEYWORDS:

• Dialogic
• performance
• discourse
• folk music
• popular culture
• identity politics

Acknowledgements

Many thanks to Kristen Brustad and Kendra Salois for their comments on earlier drafts. This study was approved by the Institutional Review Board of the University of Texas at Austin. All mistakes and imperfections in this study are, of course, the author's responsibility.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. This is my analysis, based on many observations. For example, Fouad Guessous grew up in a Francophone environment in Casablanca, only discovering malḥūn later in life. He felt that he and others who grow up without much access or interest in Arabic have lost an important part of their heritage as Moroccans, and he is very prolific in publishing his Arabic-French translations of malḥūn as anthologies, CDs, and in school textbooks. For him and others, malḥūn represents Moroccans' link to their pre-colonial past.

Additional information

Funding

The author has no financial benefits or other interests in this research. This work was supported by Fulbright Hays with a Dissertation Grant, by The American Institute of Maghribi Studies with a short-term grant, and by the Firebird Foundation for Anthropological Research with a grant for the collection of oral literature.