Co-producing knowledge and Morocco's musical heritage: a relational paradigm for colonial scholarship

ABSTRACT

The musical dimensions of the Moroccan Protectorate invite us to rethink certain tenets of colonial history, especially lingering nineteenth-century attitudes about ‘indigenous’ populations as ‘savage’. By the mid-twentieth century, efforts to comprehend Moroccan music were far less motivated by domination and submission than other agendas, beginning with ‘cultural protection’ to justify French presence, the Protectorate's priority since arrival. Publications and promotion of Moroccan music reflected French desire for long-term impact on the region. This enterprise depended on Moroccan as well as European support, addressing local needs and creating alliances with both urban and rural elites with their own political agendas. Offering archival evidence of the French Protectorate's institutional involvement in renovating Andalusian music – never before examined, yet so important in post-colonial Moroccan identity – and, despite colonial occupation, Moroccan musicians’ agency, this article focuses on the interactions between French administrator Prosper Ricard, Algerian-born musician/ethnographer Alexis Chottin, and Moroccan musicians equally concerned about their music's future. Many are here given voice for the first time. Drawing on these stakeholders’ expertise and experiences, they co-created new musical knowledge despite power asymmetries, sustained the musical practices of urban and rural populations, and encouraged traditional, hybrid and modern identities. In their newly-created Conservatory of Moroccan Music, music festivals, and Radio-Maroc, relationships shaped through shared responsibility for outcomes emerge as significantly more complex than between ‘superiors and subalterns’, reaching parity at the Fez festival (1939). Their multifaceted work continues to influence knowledge and praxis today. To understand this requires a new paradigm for colonial scholarship.

KEYWORDS:

• Prosper Ricard
• Alexis Chottin
• cultural renovation
• Andalusian music
• Chleuh music
• Radio-Maroc

Today, who would imagine that two volumes on Moroccan music – published in 1931 and 1933 by a French settler, Alexis Chottin – take up more than a foot of bookstore shelf space in Rabat? (Figure 1) As a local professor of ‘Andalusian music’ recently explained to me (Harrate Daoudi 2016), these are still being studied and taught in Moroccan conservatories, especially the musical transcriptions. They document the voices and music of some of the most important musicians of the colonial period, inaccessible elsewhere. Given such demand, a facsimile version from Casablanca appeared in 1987, reissued numerous times through 2012. An Arabic translation of Chottin's magnum-opus, Tableau de la musique marocaine (1939), is currently underway. Similarly, Moroccans continue to consult the work of his collaborator, the colonial administrator Prosper Ricard, who commissioned, directed and prefaced Chottin's Corpus de musique marocaine. Ricard's multi-volume Corpus de tapis marocains (1923–1934) was republished between 1975 and 2001, digitised in 2020.

Figure 1. Photo by Jann Pasler. Librairie Livre Service, Rabat (11 July 2019).

Ongoing interest in this research years after Moroccan independence (1956) suggests that the colonial heritage lingers on when Moroccans consider this legacy useful. In the political sphere, alongside the ongoing, contentious conflict over what language should dominate classrooms after ‘arabisation’ of the educational system in Morocco began in the 1980s, the Parliament on 22 July 2019 returned to allowing foreign languages (principally French) to be taught, especially in sciences and technology. Proponents argued for its utility: French still dominates professional life in Morocco and is believed by some as better suited in these domains than Arabic or Amazigh/Tamazight (earlier referred to as Berber) (Amrani 2019). On 18 September 2019, following the King's ‘directives to protect cultural heritage and preserve historical monuments of the kingdom’, the Ministry of Culture allocated 11 million MAD ($1,140,500) to renovation projects, such as the medieval Chellah, a Muslim necropolis built on a Phoenician site and an ancient Roman colony (Hatim 2019). Restoration of its mosque began under the Protectorate in 1915.¹

If we wish to understand better the impact of the colonial past, we need to return to history but not, the Algerian historian Mohand-Amer implores, as ‘instrumentalisation of the past’ for today's political or ideological ends. Rather we should be looking for ‘blind-spots’, examining history's local and individual dimensions. Turning away from mythologies that have shaped conflicting memories of the colonial period, he calls for greater access to archives in North Africa, more scientific methodologies, and ‘less dependence on issues of power and ideology’ (2020, 36–37, 41; 2021).²

This article addresses Mohand-Amer's concerns. It focuses on musical practices (rarely of concern to historians), individuals, and local ‘mechanisms of colonialism’, contesting contentions that they were dictated from the metropole and settlers inevitably ‘denigrated’ the colonised as ‘incomplete and atavistic’ (Trumbull IV 2009, 149) and claimed ‘a monopoly of knowledge and technical skill’ (El Mechat 2009, 13–22). Such assumptions have led to silencing North African voices and denying the importance of their contributions. Reiterating Laâbi's 1966's ‘call for rediscovery of our heritage’, it draws attention to Moroccans’ participation in the production and advancement of musical knowledge under colonialism, many here given voice for the first time, thanks to little-known sources and Ricard's extensive archives, recently acquired by the Archives Nationales du Maroc (ANM). We also learn here that what is now known as Arabo-Andalusian music grew and thrived under the Protectorate, expanding from the private salons of Andalusian descendants to the public sphere. While rooted in the pre-colonial past and contributing to a distinctive identity later embraced by nationalists (Shannon 2015, 90), this music was not, in general, a ‘marker of cultural resistance’, as Marouf (2014) posits, rather of cultural cooperation. Some have concluded that the concept of ‘Andalusian music’ itself arose under colonialism, signalling connections with medieval Iberia (Shannon 2015, 95–96). Writing of this in colonial Algeria, Miliani 2018 importantly asks, ‘Who is the legitimate protector’ of this musical heritage, ‘its practitioners or those who value it?’

To address these paradoxes, I examine colonial cultures as what the Caribbean poet-philosopher Edouard Glissant calls a two-way ‘Relation’ wherein native and settler populations were mutually, if unequally, transformed. As he points out, ‘decolonisation will have done its real work when it goes beyond’ notions of identity as ‘primarily ‘opposed to’ the coloniser. Every identity is ‘extended through a relationship with the Other’, every Relation ‘newness’ (Glissant 1997, 11, 17, 177). Methodologically, this article follows in the tradition of scholars who argue similarly that history is the study of ‘organic relationships’ (Chikhaoui 2002, 17) and coloniser and colonised were ‘mutually shaped in intimate engagement’ (Cooper and Stoler 1997; Cooper 2005). In Moroccan craft culture, Irbouh 2005 acknowledges that ‘reforms emerged from a negotiated process’ and ‘new alliances’ between French and Moroccans. To understand this ‘variegated reality’, he advises ‘analysis’ over ‘advocacy’. However, without examining the Protectorate's considerable archives, now at ANM, Irbouh was unable to identify those who participated in such alliances and the nature of ‘political cooperation’ that enhanced ‘stability and order in the medinas’ (22, 54, 68). In this article, I show how musical practices enabled and embodied such relationships, more complex and unpredictable than ‘the dichotomy of superior and subaltern’. Like post-colonial Moroccan critic Khatibi, I prefer ‘the risk of plural thought’ to binary oppositions (Rice 2009, 116). Close study of these archives has allowed me to document not only the actions of French settlers in a domain long ignored by scholars, but also, significantly, the power, agency and contributions of specific Moroccan musicians, despite whatever conditions were imposed on them.

The Relations here discussed anticipated those dominating applied research on knowledge production today, from science and technology to climate change, health and other public services. Such research not only acknowledges multi-faceted contextual issues, but also involves dynamic interactions with local participants, addressing what is relevant and important to them. That is, ‘partners recognise that the key change agents are not the programme ‘makers and shakers’ and the strategies they introduce, but rather the agents on the ground and how they respond to the opportunities afforded by the programme’ (Heaton, Day, and Britten 2015, Table 1). I have found similarly that whereas, traditionally, knowledge-producers rarely involve those who ‘commissioned, provided, or used’ their work, Ricard, Chottin and Moroccan musicians came together as policy maker, scholar and practitioners to co-produce musical knowledge.³ What linked them was concern for and interest in the future of Moroccan music.

Table 1. Hybrid Concerts in Morocco (1936–1938).

DATE	25 May 1936	16 Feb 1937	25 Feb 1937	30 July 1938
PLACE	Radio-Maroc, from the Institute, Rabat	Radio-Maroc	Municipal Theater, Casablanca	Festival of the Throne
REPERTOIRE Part 1	CMM: Touchiat in mode Hgazi-Mcharqui (stet) RM SYM orch: Chottin, Le départ de la Harka from Scènes marocains	RM SYM orch: Chottin, Scènes marocains; Sur les terrasses; Marangue, Maroc Suite Andalousian melodies, collected, harmonized and transl. Chottin RM orch: (M’Birkko): Aocâf oujâb, Yā Asafā	CMM: Touchiat in mode Hgazi-Mcharqui (stet) Casablanca CONS orch: Chottin, Dans l’Atlas	Day concert: Andalusian music by radio orchestras of Rabat, Fez, Marrakech, and Casablanca, plus Brihi
LECTURE	Chottin: Historical Origins of Andalusian music		Chottin: Historical Origins of Andalusian music (in French and Arabic)	Evening concert: Chottin: Introduction (in French and Arabic)
REPERTOIRE Part 2	CMM: 3 Andalusian songs : Aocâf oujâb, Ahda nassimou-s-sabah, Yā Asafā RM SYM orch: same songs, transcribed, harmonized, translated by Chottin RM SYM orch: 3 modern compositions inspired by Moroccan folklore: Chottin, Au jardins de Fez, Foudok, from Salé, Sur les terrasses	RM SYM orch: Chottin, Foudok, from Salé, Lalo, Danses marocaines, Borda, Esquisses Tunisiennes, Saëns, Marche, Algérienne.	CMM: 4 Andalusian songs: Aocâf oujâb, Ahda nassimou-s-sabah, Selli houmounek, Yā Asafā CONS orch: same songs transcribed, harmonized, with French translations CONS orch: Chottin, Scènes marocains, Salé, Sur les terrasses	RM SYM: Andalousian Music, transcribed by Chottin and Gouget-Valière

To understand what the Moroccan Protectorate wished to accomplish with music, we begin with its cultural agendas, especially ‘cultural protection’ of the Moroccan heritage. How did it come to be, for example, that the 2011 Moroccan constitution included the Andalusian tradition as integral to current North African national identities?⁴ Scholars have written excellent studies seeking to explain al-Ala, some delving into its origins (e.g. Shiloah 1995; Guettat 2000; Davila 2013; Chaachoo 2016; in Morocco, Aydoun 1995; Cherki 2011).⁵ Without addressing this under colonialism, Chelbi 1985 in Tunisia and Bouzar-Kasbadji 1988 in Algeria have suggested that music and political history should be understood as ‘mutually constitutive’. Glasser (2016) and Miliani (2018) studies of revival efforts in Algeria have largely left aside their colonial implications.⁶ Guettat (2000) presents Tunisian efforts in the 1930s to ‘save this music, ‘revalorise’ and ‘spread it’, as if resisting French policies rather than echoing them (240–241). Likewise, under the Moroccan Protectorate, Chottin and Ricard played important roles in the study, promotion, and dissemination of Andalusian music. For this, they drew support from elites sharing interest in its renovation. We need to understand better the relational nature of French and Moroccan investments in this tradition and how it came to unify the country and connect Moroccans with other North Africans.

To further reinforce Laabi's 1966's ‘call for rediscovery of our heritage’, I also examine the Protectorate's support for publications, performances and recordings of other musical traditions, likewise largely left out of post-colonial discourse. Through these, Chottin and Ricard drew attention to the diversity of Moroccan music – Black, blind and female musicians; dancers, actors and clowns; amateurs as well as professionals from throughout the country, none more important, from a colonial perspective, than rural Chleuh. After catastrophic losses from war in the northeastern Rif mountains (1925–1926) and the widely unpopular 1930 Berber Dahir that legally separated Berbers from Arabs, the French sought to ‘win souls’ through ‘peaceful’ means. But, to subordinate the rest of the country by 1934, they cozied up to the Glaoui family (al-Glāwī) of Chleuh descent, which dominated the Atlas region. In return for siding with the French, this clan obtained free reign to exert tyrannical power there, fanning its political ambitions. Chottin's and Ricard's engagement with Chleuh music and dance took place in this context, arguably far more important than Chleuhs’ tourist appeal. Their work, lying at the crossroads of musical currents in mid-century Morocco, serves as historical testament to who was given voice, in what contexts, and for what purposes, from military domination before 1934 to recognition of rural Berbers as integral to the nation thereafter.

Ricard, Chottin and Moroccan musicians facilitated the co-production of knowledge as ‘plural thought’ through collaboration.⁷ While we cannot examine the often invisible role played by their distinct backgrounds, beliefs, interests, strengths and motivations, archival sources document how they shared their expertise and other modes of agency, suggesting mutual respect, work toward common purposes, and, despite power asymmetries, co-responsibility for outcomes. Although a musical outsider, Ricard brought local research experience, connections with Moroccan elites, and the State's power. He had worked with artisans in Algeria before General Hubert Lyautey, Resident-General (1912–1925), lured him to Fez where, for economic and cultural reasons discussed below, he was charged with renovating Moroccan crafts. Beginning in 1920, when he took interest in Moroccan music, Ricard became responsible for informing his superiors on musical matters, making policy, giving subsidies and promoting musical renaissance. Algerian-born Chottin, who earned his living as professor of Arabic in Moroccan schools, had Western musical training, studied Moroccan musical traditions with openness and curiosity, and enacted these policies. Both pursued educational goals, seeking to attract, inform, and produce advocates among both insiders and outsiders to the Moroccan heritage. As ‘informants’, Moroccans assured the credibility of their scholarship. However, co-production of scientific knowledge is different if the sources are practitioners. Performance gives participants a voice. Moroccan musicians like Si Omar Jaïdi, Si Mohammed MBirkô, and Raïs Hadj Belaïd were highly-respected master musicians and, thus, valuable partners.

Their collaborations produced knowledge in four ways – through identities, discourses, institutions and representations.⁸ These involved musical practices, what Feld (2015) calls ‘knowledge-in-action’, examined here in music education, concerts, festivals, recordings and radio. Such contexts provided Moroccan musicians with opportunities for self-development and access to the public sphere where they could build careers and sustain Moroccan music over time. How exactly this music evolved through such collaborations remains for specialists to ascertain, the article laying a foundation. Even if aligned with colonial agendas, their contributions to musical life offered opportunities for Moroccans and Westerners to listen to one another, itself a ‘hermeneutic act’ (Barthes 1991), especially in hybrid forms that allowed people, through music, to move between identities, experiencing them both. Challenging divisions within Moroccan society, Protectorate officials presented diverse Moroccan musical traditions and sought to involve ‘all classes of [Moroccan] society’ as teachers, pupils, performers and listeners (Ricard 1930, 28). This article seeks to help us better understand the legacy of such Relations, encouraging a multi-dimensional approach to colonial scholarship.⁹

Agendas of the Moroccan Protectorate

‘Cultural Protection’

In today’s focus on the domination/submission paradigm, we often miss differences from one colonial context to another and the larger agendas underlying cultural policies.

From Indochina to the Maghreb, the notion of ‘protection’ was an essential aspect of French colonial discourse and cultural action. Anxious over the impact of building bridges, ports, railroad lines and modern buildings in their colonies (Ricard 1931b, 3), the colonial administration wished to ‘protect’ historical monuments: they communicate, not only collective memory of their heritage, but also a people's aspirations and pride. ‘Protection’ implies intentionality, directed at achieving certain purposes, including the symbolic and the political. ‘Protection’ in a colonial context signified a paternalist relationship between coloniser and colonised that served as military and cultural justification for conquest. It implied providing something that could be perceived by the colonised as desirable. Underlying this was the Protectorate's need for recognition of the value of such ‘protection’, through the public display and promotion of its actions, to support its continued presence in the region.

As Chikhaoui (2002, 18) points out, the ‘Moroccan system’ had long been based on ‘eternal return to the past to legitimise and permeate the actions of those in power’. Understanding this, soon after Morocco became a French protectorate in 1912, Lyautey, a Monarchist with an ‘absolute respect’ for religion and the ‘continuity of traditions’, created an agency charged to ‘protect and restore the Moroccan heritage’, its monuments falling apart (Ricard 1919b, v-vi). Placing Antiquities, Historical Monuments and Fine-Arts within the same administration, Lyautey did not seek to duplicate French ideas and institutions, but to create new ones. From 1915 to 1920, it renovated mosques in Rabat and Fez; the Sultan's palaces in Marrakech, Rabat and Fez; the famous Quranic schools (medersas) in Fez and Marrakech;¹⁰ and the Kasbah des Oudayas in Rabat, today a UNESCO World-Heritage site. In the 1920s, this included old city medinas where Moroccans lived and a law preventing European constructions that ‘compromised the picturesque’.

Since 1900, colonial administrators in Algeria had taken special interest in the history of Arab civilisation, particularly its Andalusian-inspired monuments and art, as in Tlemcen (Oulebstir 2005). Coming in three waves from Spain during the Reconquest, this tradition defied strict distinctions between East and West. Since the Andalusian period came to represent ‘la belle époque arabe’, protecting its traditions across North Africa became integral to French colonial policy. The deterioration of Andalusian music, as in architectural ruins, was a driving force in the French call for its protection.¹¹ From Tlemcen, professor of Arabic and Berber in Oudja, Ben Smaïl (1919, 43) advocated inclusion of Andalusian music in the project to ‘restore, reconstitute, and bring back to life architectural wonders and Arabic plastic arts’. In 1921 he created a musical ensemble, L’Andalousia (Djam’iyya al’Andalusiyya), the first of its kind in Morocco to receive public subsidy.

Two institutions, founded in Rabat in 1920, complemented this agenda: the Institute of Advanced Moroccan Studies and the Service of Indigenous Arts (SIA), an administration inspired by an Algerian precedent with no French equivalent. Under Lyautey's direction and with support from the Sultan, Georges Hardy, Director of Public Instruction, created the former as a school for colonial administrators, not following the model of learned societies in France, instead promoting ‘disinterested research’, starting with geography, history, antiquities, Moroccan medicine, language dialects, poetry and songs (Hardy 1920, 6) – ethnographies needed to understand Moroccans. Early members included two Algerians, Azouaou Mammeri and Ben Smaïl, and music teacher, Marie-Thérèse de Lens. The Institute produced a Bulletin, scholarly journal, Hesperis, and annual congresses.

At its first congress, Mlle de Lens addressed Moroccan music, noting that the Andalusian tradition ‘strongly influenced’ Western music during the Middle Ages and ‘shines light on the origins of our music’. But worried about the impact of Western progress, she noted that as Lully's orchestras with modern violins pushed aside the viola da gamba, the old lute and the rebab were disappearing in Morocco, played by only a few masters. After describing such instruments and transcribing musical excerpts, she asserted that, if one could form ‘perfect’ Moroccan orchestras that Europeans would admire like the old medersas, one could ‘save this music from eternal oblivion’ (Lens 1920, 137, 151–152).

The SIA, attached to Public Instruction, opened that year in Rabat's Kasbah des Oudayas. In some ways, its policies echoed those of ‘cultural protection’. To help Moroccan artisans thrive and compete more effectively, this administration was charged with collecting, conserving, categorising, describing useful models, and promoting these arts in exhibitions, local and foreign (DG 1931, 18–19, 23). Echoing nationalists’ call in 1938 to take inspiration from ‘the spirit of entrepreneurship’ and ‘hard work’ in ‘civilised nations’ (Hajji 2007, 236), Ricard 1941 notes that ‘entrepreneurs and producers’ who ‘transmit an art, a skill, a tradition, a culture’, ‘teach the meaning of and taste for work well-done, train apprentices, are disciplined and able to adapt to modern life’. In this, musicians could share much with artisans. In 1925, after approving the statutes of L’Andalousia, Hardy asked the SIA to develop an official policy to support ‘indigenous music’, in 1926 contributing 3000 francs (DG 1931, 27). This window of opportunity opened the possibility of research and cultural action not only for, but also with Moroccans.

Renovation in the ‘Indigenous Arts’: Prosper Ricard

Prosper Ricard (1874–1952) was trained at the Ecole Normale in Algiers and learned Arabic and Kabyle (Tamazight). Besides directing professional schools for artisans in Tlemcen and Oran, Algeria (1900–1909), he published studies of their work. In 1915, Lyautey hired him to serve as Inspector of Indigenous Arts in Fez and Meknes. On his first visit, Ricard encountered Marguerite Bel, wife of curator of Tlemcen's Andalusian museum; she had just started a project to restore the local embroidery tradition in Meknes. Inspired by her and after collaborating with Alfred Bel on a book about Tlemcen's wool industry (1913), Ricard published 15 articles on Fez's artisanal arts. In a quasi-fictional conversation with a Fassi artisan, he hinted that, underlying these publications, was his desire, however paternalist, to educate Moroccans about their own past (Ricard 1919a).

As SIA's first director (1920–1935), based in Rabat, Ricard aimed to encourage arts and crafts across the Protectorate. In him, ‘colonial epistemology, practice, and policy often intersected’ (Mokhiber 2013, 268). He not only collaborated with artisans, he shaped State policy. As political intermediary between artisans and settlers, first in Algeria, then Morocco, later Tunisia, he was responsible for articulating to both the State and the public the advantages of collaboration and investment in these industries. He aimed to bring Moroccan and French interests into alignment, with political and artistic implications for the future.

Ricard began by visiting workshops throughout the country to identify key actors and build partnerships in Moroccan decorative arts. There, he took interest in the role of geography, sex, and social status in their history, diversity and originality. Ricard made drawings of representative models as prototypes, documented and catalogued artisans’ work, offered advice, promoted employment and encouraged women's collaboration, such as when men made slippers and belts and women embroidered them (Ricard 1948). After opening SIA branches in Fez, Meknes and Marrakech, he created regional museums where his work samples could ‘facilitate the reeducation of adult artisans and initiate new generations to the country's arts’ (DG 1931, 18). In addition, Ricard assisted artisans with foreign markets, leading to stable jobs and greater professionalism.

Ricard also promoted artisans’ work widely. Beginning in 1916, publishing many accessible articles on Moroccan culture in the newspaper, France-Maroc, Ricard advocated protection and revival of Moroccan arts and crafts. He also praised Fez's magnificent architecture, Arab monuments across the country, Berber kasbahs, and Moroccan aesthetics, returning to these later in radio broadcasts. These, his lectures at the Institute (1925–1938), and articles in Hesperis laid the groundwork for his major publications and Guide bleu, in four editions by 1930. Ricard also carried his messages abroad, speaking at major exhibitions in Paris, London and Chicago.

At the same time, following the lead of Hardy and advice from Moulay (Mūlāy) Idriss ben Abdelali El Idrissi, a singer and intellectual whom he met in 1925, Ricard turned to music, the next focus of the Protectorate's cultural protection. This was a natural progression. Sometimes artisanal and musical activities took place in the same spaces, their practitioners artisans by day, musicians by night. In Algeria, the tar designated both a percussion instrument and a weaver's movement, the m’allem, a master of both apprentices and music (Marouf 2014, 419). Showing respect for Moroccan traditions, Ricard acquired insights into not only the interests and tastes of urban elites, but also the closed, intimate spaces of Moroccan society.

Ricard's attention to Andalusian music began in 1907 when the Algerian government sent him on a mission to study the architecture and monuments of Andalusian Spain. Later, like Ben Smaïl and Mlle de Lens, he understood that its musical tradition, as practiced in North Africa, had suffered ‘decadence’ from

lack of direction, lack of teachers, lack of appropriate instruction, lack of written documents, … and lack of generosity because the professionals, miserly and difficult to learn from, were very little interested in passing this on to others, including future competitors, and so Moroccan music became more and more impoverished each day.

He also found problematic deformations in Andalusian music over time, especially what resulted from ‘brassage’, or mixing with outside influences, an analogue to the ‘contamination’ he attributed to transformations in the decorative arts (Ricard 1918a, 7; 1931a, i, ii; 1932b; Pasler 2015). Chottin (1946) later dated the era of ‘exile, anarchy, and decadence’ as 1492–1934, implying positive change under the Protectorate.

Ironically, it was not modern European music that most concerned Ricard, rather the growing taste for popular song from Egypt, independent since 1922. In 1930, he explained, ‘North Africa has its eyes turned towards Egypt whose every thought, every form of art, especially music, is avidly absorbed by the North African Muslim elite, as if the only spiritual nutrition worthy of its aspirations’. ‘Foreign airs’ on recordings from the Arab world, he contended, were ‘marked by a dubious modernism and made with a commercial purpose’ from which ‘Andalusian music derives no benefit’. Ricard feared a loss of its originality, ‘an imminent collapse [of the genre] precipitated by bad use of the gramophone and the radio, adopted with enthusiasm in all Moroccan milieux’. The ‘local heritage’ risked disappearing, along with its lingering European legacy. This would justify the utility and allure of ‘recovery’ by the Protectorate (Ricard 1930, 92; 1931a, ii; 1931b, 10; 1932c, 20, 24; Pasler 2015).

In systematically organising his action in the decorative arts, Ricard explained, ‘collecting, conserving, and describing old works is not enough. We must produce new ones. For this, we must contact people, decide on the most capable to accomplish this’, then ‘make an inventory, study, and revive the past: such is the programme we have pursued from the beginning’ (Ricard 1930, 26; 1931b, 6, 8). Similarly, his musical agenda – teaching old airs, performing them, making recordings, and creating a Museum of Moroccan Music with instruments and poetry anthologies – would make musical renovation possible, a compelling argument for cooperation. Crucial was finding Moroccans with similar interests.

Alexis Chottin’s Musical Pluriactivity

Born in Algiers, Alexis Chottin (1891–1975) grew up around Spanish immigrants enamoured of Andalusian music. He played in the local wind-band and studied music, various instruments, and composition at Algiers’ Ecole Normale. His first teaching position was in an Arab town in Nador where he collected Kabyle songs (Chabot, de 1929). Moving to Morocco in 1920, he taught at Franco-Arabic elementary schools (introducing singing into the curriculum), Collège Moulay Youssef (Fez), Lycée Gouraud (Rabat), Ecole musulmane des fils de notables (Salé, beginning in 1922, as professor of Arabic and director), and later Collège des Orangers (Rabat). In 1928, he wrote the ‘official hymn of the Protectorate's Muslim schools’, Chant des jeunes marocains. During this time, Chottin devoted his spare time to studying Moroccan music. From 1923 to 1927, he collected, transcribed, and published songs from Fez. Asked to compose something for his College's awards ceremony c. 1921, he wrote two of what would later become twelve choruses for his Salé pupils, Le Muezzin (1930), to be sung in French and Arabic. These were inspired by listening to Koranic singing classes and street beggars, soon recorded by Pathé. In its introduction, he admits to bringing his own imagination to the project: ‘It's Arab and Berber music, but pondered over, digested, or, if you wish, ‘reacted to’ by a Western sensitivity’. Chottin hoped these choruses could bridge differences, ‘a source of spiritual communion between French and Muslim people’ (Chottin c. 1930b, i). Not surprisingly, such hybridities, encouraged by the Protectorate, elicited both admiration and criticism (Pasler 2012, 2015).¹²

Chottin was Ricard's first and most important musical collaborator. Garnering attention for his Fez transcriptions and at the request of Si Mohamed Tazi, Pacha of Fez, in 1927 Chottin received 5000 francs to report on ‘the state of music in Morocco’ and make recommendations for its ‘methodical study, conservation, and renovation’ (Ricard 1932b; Le Courrier du Maroc, May 7, 1939). To enact these recommendations, in 1929 Chottin received another ‘mission’ to assist in this process. Like Ricard, who worried that outside influences could lead to ‘parasitic ornaments’ – a reference to the ‘parasitic constructions’ attached to archaeological ruins – Chottin was concerned about not so much loss as accretions over time. Following Ricard's example, he sought to collect, notate, and preserve ‘melodies and rhythms before they changed in reaction to foreign influences’, that is, the oldest music available (Ricard 1931a, ii; Chottin 1928, 16).

In this spirit, on advice of Moulay Idriss, and seeking collaborations with Moroccan musicians, Ricard created the Conservatory of Moroccan Music (CMM).¹³ While colonial officials across the French empire were beginning to advocate study of ‘indigenous music’, colonial support for training Moroccan musicians in their own traditions was virtually non-existent.¹⁴ With funding from Jean Gotteland, director of Public Instruction, Fine-Arts and Antiquities, CMM began in October 1929 as a Cercle musical in the SIA premises at the Oudayas, then under Chottin as director. Teaching Arabic to Moroccan elites’ sons for years had not only assured Chottin a stable job and local credibility, this language proficiency undoubtedly helped in communicating with Moroccan musicians.

Aiming to participate in the ‘general work of reconstruction undertaken by Marshall Lyautey’ (Chottin 1934), Chottin not only organised and administered CMM's classes, but also collaborated with Moroccan colleagues on research to ‘determine the diverse musical genres and their relationships with dance and popular theatre, notate the music, realise well-chosen recordings, and assemble documents to serve the history of music’ (Ricard 1935b, 19; 1932c, 21, 23). This led to wide recognition. In May 1931, the Académie française awarded him a medal for ‘all his work, particularly his contributions to music education in Morocco’. That same month, the Parisian Ménestrel reproduced his 1928 lecture on Moroccan music and its publisher, Editions Heugel, issued the first volume of his Corpus de musique marocaine: Nouba de Ochchâk, a study and transcription of Andalusian music in contemporary Morocco (Chottin 1931) – see Figure 1. La Revue musicale du Maroc reminded readers of ‘all that Moroccan music owes to him’ (N.A. 1931, e.g. Chottin 1923 to 1931). Later in 1939, Chottin's synthetic Tableau de musique marocaine was published by the most important Orientalist press in France, Editions Geuthner, also publisher of Prosper Ricard's four volumes of Moroccan rug designs and Baron d’Erlanger's monumental six-volume La Musique Arabe, similarly reprinted in 2001. The Tableau, widely reviewed in press, won the Prix du Maroc in 1938.

Yet, Chottin's pursuits as a respected, albeit self-taught, ethnographer and scholar of Moroccan music do not tell the whole story. His life was characterised by ‘pluriactivity’, several simultaneous and successive types of work.¹⁵ Over the years, he composed symphonic poems, melodies, Arabic songs, and variations on Moroccan themes, some of these ‘transcriptions, translations, and harmonizations’ of Moroccan music he had collected. As music critic and Moroccan correspondent for Ménestrel (1930–1939), his reviews of Western music concerts – from visiting Parisian soloists, such as Alfred Cortot, Wanda Landowska, Pierre Bernac and Francis Poulenc, to the children of French settlers – built Westerners’ trust in Chottin, perhaps leading to the publication of his Moroccan music ethnographies in France. Moreover, in his essays on Moroccan music,¹⁶ Chottin used his cross-cultural sensitivities to explain Moroccan musical concepts to Westerners. In trying to describe the five-beat rhythms of Berber music, rare in French music, he asked French listeners to remember an air from Gounod's Mireille (Chottin 1928). He proposed that this five-beat pattern is ‘nothing other than the peonic ‘genre’ of the Greeks from twenty centuries earlier, used to accompany dances on Crete’, also found in the Basque mountains (Chottin 1936, 67). His articles on Moroccan music helped illuminate this tradition for many audiences.

Traditional Identities in Discourse and Practice

Urban vs. Rural Traditions

Western scholars have long reiterated Lyautey who, to divide and conquer, pointed to distinctions between urban Arabs and rural Berbers, as with Viets and mountain tribes in French Indochina. However, the often-cited antagonism between ‘bled-el-Makhzan (land of government)’ and ‘bled-es-siba (land of dissent)’ did not map neatly onto urban vs. rural or Arabs vs. Berbers. Even before colonialism, dissent by Arab artisans in urban guilds was directed against the Sultan, rural tribes could be Arab or Berber, and the latter long had their own ‘strong legal tradition’ (Chikhaoui 2002, 14–15, 63–65).

Such binaries impacted colonial discourse in Morocco significantly, but call for critical analysis. When it came to music and poetry, Berber scholar Robert Montagne contrasted the ‘imaginative Arabs’ with Berbers’ ‘absence of imagination and poverty of invention’, albeit capacity for ‘adaptation’ and ‘acquisition’ (1931/1986, 33). However, Ricard and Chottin organised their research into frames defined by context more than race: two life styles, nomadic and sedentary, whether Arab or Berber; the influence of ‘two civilizations, urban and rural’, the former including popular, classical, and Jewish music; ‘the Makhen tendancy and the Siba mentality’ as ‘two states of mind’ (Chottin 1924, 225; 1928, 4); and later ‘classical’ music, associated with cultivated urban elites, that of ‘popular allure’, embraced by artisans in cities and the countryside, and Saharan music, with Black influences (Ricard 1932d).

Significantly, Ricard and Chottin took care not to overstate these generalisations. In the category of Arabs, Chottin includes those who ‘returned from Spain’, ‘berberized Arabs as well as arabized Berbers’ (Chottin 1928, 7). They also acknowledged paradoxes and intracultural hybridity. Ricard (1918a, 7) explains that he encountered mountain tribes known for their Arab origins, yet producing work with a Berber character. Chottin (1932, 351n) points out, ‘Popular songs use all genres, sacred and profane, urban and rural. They are simultaneously an original substratum and the residue of cultivated, learned music.’¹⁷

Right from the beginning, Ricard found that the repetitive geometric patterns of ‘peasant’ or ‘rural’ art, never representing nature, differentiated themselves from the more complex patterns of ‘urban art’, often inspired by vegetation and designs from Asia Minor. The latter, with its multiple influences, were also harder to define (Ricard 1917, 1918a, 1918b, 10). When it came to music, while admitting that there could be a third kind that results from ‘their interpretation, their mixing’, Ricard similarly distinguished between ‘rural’ music’ – peasant, primitive, as varied as the contours of the soil that changes so much’ from the mountains to the Sahara – and ‘urban’ music–’learned and refined, from Andalusian memories that recall the Reconquest, quite unified and more or less classical … often performed in bourgeois gatherings’ (Ricard 1931a, ii, v). Chottin connected the binaries mentioned above to two kinds of ‘aural education’, the first defined by rhythm, its ‘primitive’ nature linked to rural people's closeness to nature, the second by melody, associated with ‘the civilised, the refined’ aspects of city life. Moreover, as he explained, whereas rural Berber music – older and more varied – was performed outdoors, in public, and accompanied by dance, urban Andalusian music – a classical art with its own ‘monuments’ – was played indoors, in private, and by highly trained musicians (Chottin 1928, 4–7).

With important differences, this discourse recalls long-standing divisions in Europe between city and countryside, predating colonial strategies of domination, and French approaches to folk music. Ricard's and Chottin's use of ‘refined’ and ‘civilised’ for urban Andalousian music, ‘peasant, primitive’ for rural Chleuh music, recall the importance of class in such divisions in Europe. While, in Europe, they connoted written vs. oral communication, with folk songs composed collectively and ‘usually disseminated anonymously’, in Morocco, urban art music was also an oral tradition and Chleuh master musicians were widely recognised. More pertinent than Scottish and German traditions (Gelbart 2007) are French predecessors. In the 1880s Bourgault-Ducoudray allied ‘primitive music’ with ‘primitive races’ taking refuge from outside influences in the mountains, thus synonymous with racial origins. Similarly, Berbers retreated to the mountains with the Arab invasion. Julien Tiersot looked to ‘melodic types’ of the French chansons populaires as ‘the remaining debris of the primitive art of our race’ (Pasler 2007, 156–157), but there were many races in Morocco. Embraced and idealised, ‘primitive’, meaning developmentally early, was also applied in France to certain art music, e.g. Palestrina's early polyphony, popular in the 1890s. But, unlike Western art music, fixed by written notation, the ever-changing nature of chansons populaires, characterised by variations in melodic formulae and rhythms over time and space, suggest the effects of not only oral transmission, but also acclimatisation, i.e. adaptation to context, and assimilation – key elements in French imperialism as well as Chleuh music. Finding these variants across France suggested a shared tradition, capable of signifying the nation not through ‘purity’ or nature, as Gelbart identifies elsewhere, but omnipresence. Likewise, Chleuh groups’ extensive tours around Morocco, one over 31 months, undoubtedly contributed to trans-regional connections through music (Tiersot 1894; Ricard 1933a; Pasler 2007). To the extent that understanding rural Moroccan music was pursued by a cultural outsider, Chottin resembles Tiersot, a Parisian, and other Europeans, except that Berber society was not ‘dying’, the ‘salvage’ of its music did not depend on the outsider, and Chottin integrates analysis of dance as essential to this tradition (Gelbart 2007, 1–13, 114, 167–171; Williams 1973; Chottin 1933b). Also unlike in Europe, Moroccan national identity increasingly was tied to its art music, even if linked to its origins in Syria and Spain.

Arguably more important than these European resonances were local political needs, especially alliances with urban elites. The Andalusian refugees in Morocco settled largely in Fez and Rabat. The 1917 Dahir had left the ‘hierarchies of the pre-colonial order untouched’ (Miller 2013, 94), including municipal councils with local elites. Having lived in both towns, Ricard and Chottin recognised that their music was sophisticated as well as ‘healthy distraction’, ‘recreation’ they could ‘perform for one another’, and ‘entertainment that keeps them away from political chitchat’. It is important to note that, for Chottin, Andalusian music expressed values colonisers wished to support: ‘the quasi-religious respect for tradition, submission to the rules received from the ancients, defiance in face of all innovation.’ Meanwhile, it recalls not only the connection to medieval Spain, but also bidirectional influences over the centuries between European and Moroccan music. The Western sonata form, Chottin noted, was ‘probably an adaptation of the Arabic nūba’ from Grenada (Chottin 1928, xiii, 14,16; 1929a, 32, 38, 39; 1931, xiv).

Ricard's and Chottin's early publications support these urban/rural distinctions. Volume 1 of Ricard's Corpus de tapis marocains (1923), written ‘under orders of the Residence-General’ for the SIA, reproduces rug designs from Rabat. As Ricard notes in his introduction, these carpets were the ‘prototype’ for all other urban carpets in Morocco ‘of which the oldest seem to go back to the 18th century.’. This Corpus was assembled to codify and legislate which designs should be used in carpets exported abroad (Ricard 1923, vii, 5). Likewise, volume 1 of Chottin's Corpus de musique marocaine, ‘published under the direction of Prosper Ricard’ for the SIA, transcribes an urban Andalusian nūba from Rabat, based on a text in the al-Haïk compilation (1786), itself an earlier ‘restoration’ (Chottin 1931, xiii). Like Ricard's urban rug designs, this nūba was meant to serve as a model to be studied, used in teaching, and emulated or, as Ricard later put it less prescriptively, as ‘typical examples of classical urban music’ (Ricard 1935b, 19).

In the next volumes of his Corpus (1926, 1927), Ricard focuses on rug designs from rural areas of the Moyen and Haut Atlas, but without the intention of having these used as models since rural genres were always changing.¹⁸ Then in 1928 Resident-General Théodore Steeg requested that cultural renovation should spread to the tribes of the plains and the mountains and include music. In 1932, Ricard wrote on the arts and music of Souss and asked Chottin to turn next to music of the Chleuh, ‘a very important part of the Moroccan population, larger than that of all the cities put together (Ricard 1933a, 5). With regions the Chleuh inhabited largely remaining outside the Protectorate until 1934, it was looking to incorporate them, political interests underlying musical choices.

Chottin's Corpus II (1933b) focuses on Chleuh music and dance from the Haut Atlas, Anti-Atlas and Souss. The Chleuh, chosen for their musical talent and ‘suppleness in terms of assimilation’, were known for their ‘pastoral isolation’, recalling the French folk. Ricard wrote a preface and introduction to Chottin's analysis. He presents the major practitioners and troupe members by name, their instruments, poetry, performing tours and three-partite spectacles – an instrumental prelude, song, and dance. Just as Chottin's volume 1 follows the model of Rouanet/Yafil's Répertoire in terms of monodic transcriptions with rhythms notated on separate staves and texts in both French and Arabic, volume 2 presents musical transcriptions of short tunes in various musical modes. These were organised geographically and acknowledging tribal ethnicities or by performance group. The rest, refuting the lack of invention Montagne saw as characteristic of Berbers, focuses on notation of the composite rhythms, gestures, and dance movements accompanied by Chleuh music, including foot patterns, bodily positions, and group configurations, This volume – first of its kind – thus ties musical fragments and their rhythms to dance steps. Photographs of performers with instruments and in dance positions bring the notations to life. In Chottin (1939), the author further explores its rhythmic complexity. To show the four parts of the body enacting Chleuh musico-choreography, he developed another innovative notation consisting of a four-line staff, each with its own meter (e.g. 2/4 and 6/8) (Figure 2).

Figure 2. Choreographic notation. Alexis Chottin, Tableau de musique marocaine. Paris: Geuthner, 1939.

There were also other reasons to focus on the Chleuh, largely sedentary people. Their music suggested that North Africans had common origins with not only the Middle East and Europe through Arabo-Andalusian music, but also ancient Greece. Whereas folklorist Louis Bourgault-Ducourday had identified Greek scales in Brittany, Salvador Daniel and Rouanet in Algeria, Chottin compared Chleuhs’ sung and danced Ahidus (Aḥidūs) with the ‘Corinthian dithyramb’, their mixed chorus arranged in a circle (Pasler 2007; Chottin 1929a, 1930a). At an ‘indigenous soirée’ in Marrakech, organised by Si Mammeri, a local reviewer, impressed with Chleuh rhythms and dance, heard the timbre of feet beating as ‘ancient, perhaps the origin of poetry or the longs and shorts of the Phoenicians or Homer, maybe to show Stravinsky what people did four thousand years ago’ (L’Atlas, June 9, 1929). On another occasion, Boutet 1930 agreed, the Chleuh could ‘help us understand what Sophocles and Euripides must have borrowed from shepherd games in Thessaly’. If North African Berber music could be a potential source of knowledge about ancient Greek music, then knowledge of the Other was capable of enhancing knowledge of the Self.

Chottin surmised that Berbers’ music may have predated that of the Greeks, having ‘borrowed and borrowing nothing from anyone’. Following an article in Zeitschrift für Vergleichende Musikwissenschaft suggesting parallels among Asian and Berber music, Chottin wrote that Chleuhs ‘never brag about preserving an old traditional folklore’. While they constantly assimilate other music, the ‘Cheulh personality’ imposes ‘its manner of listening, its rhythms, its modes of expression that continue over time with remarkable unity’ (Chottin 1933c, 11, 12).

The democratic nature of the Chleuh and the original character of their music led to widespread fascination among French settlers and urban Moroccans, few of whom knew it. Chleuh musicians, and the festivities to which they contributed, were frequently featured in the press and news clips. By January 1932, Ricard claimed, with remarkable hubris, that the ‘prosperity’ of these artistic groups was ‘a consequence of our presence in Morocco’, overlooking the fact that the increase in Chleuh groups from 3 or 4 to around 20 in past decades may have been due to Raïs Hadj Belaïd (Hāj Bilaīd), who claimed that 37 of his former musicians were now touring on their own (Ricard 1933b, 14). To the extent that French support for Chleuh music and dance won the ‘hearts and minds’ of a population which had resisted French domination, it may have helped in the Protectorate's conquest of the rest of Morocco. As French ambitions grew, Chottin claimed, ‘we will attempt to predict what the future evolution of this art could be and in what direction official action should be taken to save its distinctive characteristics and its cultural value’ (Chottin 1939, 54).

Thus, while Ricard and Chottin understood urban arts as ‘more advanced’ than rural ones, they recognised the latter's inherent qualities and political importance, including, as suggested in their music, their capacity for assimilation. Ricard and Chottin also acknowledged ‘reciprocal influences between Arabs and Berbers’ (Chottin 1929a, 39). In giving substantial attention to both traditions, their work led to the conclusion that urban and rural art, each with a long history, were integral, valued parts of the Protectorate, a history they intended to shape.

Co-Producing Knowledge and Music

We’ve seen how important was Chottin's collaboration with Prosper Ricard. The latter commissioned Chottin's reports on Moroccan music. He ‘directed’ and contributed long introductions to Chottin's Corpus I and II, and much more. Their respect was mutual and they seemed to have shared many fundamental values, especially a commitment to the Protectorate's agendas. Still, the success of their endeavours depended on investment in and partnership with Moroccans, particularly those with shared interests. Earlier in Rabat, Resident-General Steeg, who began his career as a radical socialist, opened the 1928 Congress of the Institute noting, ‘Our coming together will result not from constraints and resignation, but from reciprocal esteem. This will give rise to the collaboration of these two peoples aware of their respective originality’ (N.A. 1928). The 1931 International and Intercolonial Congress on Native Society in Paris called on Westerners to ‘act upon the native and promote him, in human terms’, through ‘tolerance’ and ‘collaboration’ (Wilder 2005, 239).

Focus on artisans arose out of the need to counteract the inevitable impact of modern imported goods — ‘unemployment and misery touching the majority of artisans in urban centers’ — and help them compete successfully with rivals in other countries (Ricard 1931b, 3, 4). To ‘protect’ their jobs as well as the ‘local character of their industries’, at first the Protectorate created official workshops in major cities. To encourage production of carpets in the traditional manner and their sale abroad, it established a stamp guaranteeing a rug's authenticity, quality, and ‘indigenous character’ and deleting the customs tax. Ironically, this could include ‘acceptably authentic’ innovations, including adaptations to remove foreign influence or suit market demands (Mokhiber, 270–271; see also Girard 2006).

Ricard preferred study and ‘indirect supervision’ (Ricard n.d.b). During his visits around the country, he asked local leaders and military officers to identify the best artisans who then filled out detailed questionnaires about themselves and their production, its typologies and fabrication methods. Ricard published their answers and his analyses in his multi-volume Corpus (1923-1929). But reviving local industries relied most of all on collaborating with Moroccans, including their urban guilds (corporations). Recognising practitioners’ individual needs, Ricard likewise supported private initiative, allowing artisans to remain in their homes, form their own corporations, and sell their products. To train the next generation, including women, the SIA also opened schools.

In Andalusian music too, collaboration was defined as shared work on its revival and renovation. Here too, the presumption of authenticity played a role, but which tradition, from which people, in which place? Refugees came from various cities in Andalousia. What has been the role of ‘communal memory’ and practice in reconstituting it and of external influences over time? And how should this be captured, represented, and promoted? On the methodology of folk music collecting, Stokes (1994, 7) and Walden (2013) have argued that ‘authenticity is a discursive construct, rather than a property inherent in music, and it is always subjective and mutable’. In Europe, preoccupation with authenticity often focused on folk music as emblematic of national origins (Gelbart 2007; Pasler 2007, 159–160). However, in the twentieth century, questions of authenticity arose in classical art music for both Westerners and North Africans. Whether Wanda Landowska and European early music societies or proponents of Andalusian music, they sought continuity with musical traditions of the distant past. In North Africa, this included ties to certain families with ‘purity of blood’. According to a contemporary Algerian, ‘people think of authenticity as residing in individuals rather than the music itself’. As such, master musicians could ‘withhold or distort knowledge’ (Glasser 2016, 27, 39, 164).

Like Ricard, Chottin worked with locals in this pursuit of musicians and their knowledge of tradition. Aware of problems inherent in the oral tradition, he sought those who were ‘above all, respectful of the tradition and in a way incapable of changing a single note’. As he tells it, when it came to who and what to transcribe, ‘Moroccans themselves took charge of choosing for us the master that we needed in the person of Si Omar Jaïdi, originally from Fez and personal musician of his Majesty the Sultan’. In his introduction, Chottin explains:

We took care not to influence this informant … . He performed for us (dicter) what he calls the root (el-asl) of the song, that is, the fundamental melody stripped of its ornaments (zuak), very often parasites … . These ornaments are one of the most original characteristics of Andalusian music, what leads the artist to improvise, to the need to create. Among the embellishments, some are used so often that they became obligatory … our informant always pointed them out. But he took care not to imitate the pseudo-virtuose who mask their ignorance under the pretext of ornamenting the melody and end up distorting and corrupting it.¹⁹

In his Corpus I, Nouba de Ochchâk, Chottin endeavoured to capture Jaïdi's style and musical choices. For him, it represented the continuity of ‘official music, made for courts and palaces’. ‘Even if not written’, he understood it as ‘fixed in memory … to escape the evolutionary laws governing popular [folk] song’. Only ‘ornaments’ that ‘serve the role of filler between the song's fundamental notes’ were permitted. Respecting this classical tradition, Chottin notated what he heard without changes. To ‘corroborate the oral tradition’, he also consulted three other ‘essential sources’, manuscripts acquired in Fez and Rabat (Chottin 1931, xiii–xvi).

If Chottin's contacts in Rabat helped him gain access to the Sultan's musician, similarly Ricard and the Pacha of Marrakech, Thami El Glaoui – cosmopolitan son of a slave and close collaborator of the French in their ‘pacification’ (conquest) of the mountains and desert – most likely introduced Chottin to Cheulh musicians. Glaoui had his own reasons to collaborate with the French and facilitate access to Chleuh musicians – his ambition to depose the Sultan and take his place. Ricard first encountered their spectacles in Marrakech on his first trip to Morocco in 1913, later at Glaoui's palace. Afterwards, he invited them to perform in Rabat and paid Odéon to record them. In his substantial introduction to Chottin's Corpus II, Ricard refers to four major Chleuh Raïs (maestros) from different regions, the size and makeup of their troops, a typical programme, and twelve recordings he commissioned of their songs. Chottin explains that most music in Corpus II comes from what he gathered from Raïs Mohammed Sasbou (Muhammad Sasbū). His troop of 16–18 members, with 12 dancers, performed all over the country, including in Casablanca and Rabat where they most likely collaborated on this volume. Some transcriptions are of Sasbou's ‘favourite songs’, some adaptations of European military band music, recorded by Odéon. Chottin also includes music and dance by Raïs Brahim's ensemble and a spectacle by Raïs Hadj Belaïd. This elderly poet-composer who spoke both Arabic and Berber, a kind of ‘official’ artist, ‘often proclaimed the benefits of the Moroccan state and its representatives’. Glaoui considered Belaïd the most famous of the period. Ricard first met him in Marrakech, where his troop performed at a wedding. Apparently Ricard invited his musicians for a ten-day residency at the CMM where he interviewed the Raïs for his introduction to Chottin's Corpus II (Ricard 1933a, 13–15).

CMM offered Chottin an ideal context for teamwork with Moroccan colleagues. Beginning in October 1929, he hired the best local musicians who could both teach and serve as ‘informants’ in his research. Two of them, El Hadj Abdesselem ben Youssef (al-Hāj ʻAbdassalām bin Yūssif) and Si Mohammed MBirkô (Muḥammad Mbirqū), were among the Moroccan delegation to the Congress of Arabic Music (Cairo, 1932). With his phenomenal memory, Ben Youssef, a singer, could dictate an entire nūba and identify the melodies on over 50 recordings. MBirkô, rebec and lute performer, could notate his lessons. The singer Moulay Idriss, hired later, could dictate six classical songs, including their variants, and produced a song collection for use in teaching, 200 copies of which Chottin purchased for CMM in 1935.

Like artisans who shared specimens of their best work for Ricard's rug Corpus, these colleagues enabled Chottin to notate important musical repertoire. Their collaborations produced enough material for three more volumes of his Corpus, sadly unrealised, including transcriptions of 26 pieces from another nūba, Hagaz El Mecherci (Hijāz al-Mašriqī). These restitutions required great effort from colleagues and repeated performances (Ricard 1932b). Chottin also collaborated with CCM professors on one song that, although having an ‘oriental filiation’, had degraded over time in terms of its rhythms and melodic shape. Yā Asafā, he explained, was neither an Andalusian sana (ṣanʻa) nor a griha (ġīida), but an ‘intermediary’, the best known lament inspired by nostalgia for Andalousia. After translating and analysing its five stanzas of text and rhyme schemes as well as its free use of the modes, Chottin asked Moroccan colleagues to play it for him so that he might transcribe their performance. MBirkô accompanied himself on the rebec, singing in unison with it, Ben Youssef on the tar, Mokhtar Loudiyi (Muktār Lūdiyi), who arrived in October 1931, on the lute (Chottin n.d.).

These performances resulted in three distinct versions of Yā Asafā, embodying collaborators’ different talents and styles of performance. MBirkô played the melody in a bare way, as his rebec did not lend itself to virtuosity; Ben Youssef used hesitation in his delivery to elicit desire for the melody, perhaps coming from the parlando he employed in performing qacidas (qcîda/qaṣīdas); full of irregularities and involuntary syncopations, Loudiyi's singing resembled his playing as a left-handed musician. In transcribing these, Chottin wished to show that, ‘transcriptions can bring to light not only variations related to the oral tradition, but also individual aspects of the ornamented style.’ Although he never published these nor his complete score with accompanying instrumental parts, Chottin made a simple version of the first three stanzas, reproduced in his article on the CMM to exemplify their collaborative work (Ricard 1932b, 28; Chottin 1934). Chottin also composed his own rendition of Yā Asafā for piano and voice, respecting variations in the repeats, verses and refrain. As in Tiersot's transcriptions of chansons populaires, he added rich harmonies and instrumental interludes, likely for Western audiences, the second with a habanera rhythm, later the last movement of his Chants arabes d’Andalousie (Paris: Dupuis, 1938).

Co-producing these works endowed them with intelligibility, legitimacy and meaning. Not only did this process define and stabilise certain musical pieces and variants through written notation, some widely accessible through publications, it rendered them aural through performances. Sharing these with the public was a domain wherein Chottin wielded considerable power. In 1934, he organised the CMM's first public concert at the Oudayas museum. CMM performers played excerpts from six nūbas, including Nouba de Ochchâk, and Yā Asafā – works Chottin had transcribed. Balafreij improvised and Moulay Idriss sang bitain and moual (muwâl/mawâl) with French translations for the mixed audience. Chottin then introduced and conducted his Franco-Arabic choruses, Le Muezzin. While such concerts were useful in demonstrating their accomplishments to the Protectorate, the musicians showcased their talents. In sponsoring this one, attended by director of Public Instruction Gotteland, the Pacha of Rabat, and many Muslim and European elites, the SIA hoped to stimulate formation of a ‘Franco-Muslim association, the Friends of Moroccan Music’ (Ricard 1934a). With the Protectorate now in power throughout Morocco, was this a model for how it envisaged culture contributing to political stability?

Public Action, New Institutions and the Music Business

Other significant collaborations were based in the public sphere: specifically three new institutions created by the Protectorate – CMM, music festivals, and Radio-Maroc. Here the Protectorate's engagement in cultural protection, promotion of Arab and Berber culture, and commitment to collaboration gave rise to new jobs for Moroccans, regular salaries, and new markets for their products. This allowed them to make a living that was ‘interesting from both an artistic and financial perspective’ (Ricard 1931b, 6). Although supervised by Frenchmen, Moroccans could express their creativity and grow as artists, spurring unprecedented expansion in the music business, including for women.²⁰ These three institutions also stimulated public interest in Moroccan music and facilitated the formation of a coherent aesthetic, with implications lasting well beyond the Protectorate.

Institutionalising Musical Knowledge at the Conservatoire de Musique Marocaine

Beginning in 1930, the SIA budgeted 20,000 francs per year to support the CMM in Rabat and, with the help of Pathé and Odéon, a library of recordings, musical instruments, and books. It would be a ‘laboratory for Moroccan music where performers come together several times a week at fixed hours throughout the year to work seriously on perfecting their technique and developing their musical culture.’ CMM's curriculum focused on urban music, predominantly the Andalusian classical tradition. It also taught popular genres, qacidas drawing on this tradition and aïtas (aytas/ayṭa), ‘long scorned’.²¹ Lessons for ‘pupils asking for instruction as well as amateurs [non-professionals] or professionals wanting to improve’ would help ‘save traditional techniques from oblivion and give them new life’ (Ricard 1930, 21; 1931a, iv; 1932a; 1936).

Unlike traditional apprenticeships wherein pupils studied with one teacher, this new institution, recognising multiple ways of knowing and doing, offered instruction from various teachers. Chottin's credibility as director came from not only his conservatory training, but also his publications, research connections with Moroccan musicians, sincerity, and enthusiasm. Ricard charged him to ‘look after the company’, ‘interact with it daily’, and ‘guide it in its exercises and teaching’ (Ricard 1936). But putting together a faculty proved difficult. The CMM needed well-known artists, but most lived in Fez or Marrakech. Ricard's relationship with Rabati elites and ‘bourgeois’ Moroccans opened doors, though many musicians in these contexts were amateurs.

The first teachers, its ‘founders’, resembled the traditional Andalusian orchestra, with Ben Youssef on the tambourine (tar), MBirkô on rebab (rebâb) and lute (ûd), Mohammed Guedira on violin (kamanja/kemân-gäh). Although vocal genres receive little attention in Moroccan scholarship, Chottin considered bitaïn (bitayn/batayn) and moual important enough to hire one singer for each. Both knew Ricard, had encouraged creation of the CMM, proven themselves on Rabat's 1928 festival and Radio-Maroc, and made recordings for Ricard in 1929 (see below). Si Abdesselam Balafreij (Abdassalām Bilfraj), aged 25 and bourgeois, entered in 1929 as pupil, becoming teacher in 1930. It took Ricard until January 1931 to persuade Moulay Idriss, like Balafreij an ‘amateur’, to join as bitaïn teacher. More ‘cultured’ than other Conservatoire colleagues, the latter later functioned as associate director, remaining on staff through 1939. Four additional lutenists were hired in 1931–1932, Si Omar El Ouali, bitaïn singer and concierge, and two more violinists, Mohammed El Aoufir and Si Mohammed Bel Khadir (Bilqādir/Bin Khidir), in 1934.

With instruction free and open to all, ‘regardless of origin, age or culture’, with or without an instrument, the selection of students reflected French desire for wide accessibility, not just children of elites. This presented serious challenges. All Moroccans, they came from various social classes with different habits, not always available at the same hours. Chottin thus scheduled lessons adapted to their schedules, usually after sunset. From 1929 to 1934, CMM had 31 students. The first group of 14 ranged in age from 17 to 30, including artisans (two in leather, one in wood), a hairdresser, chauffeur, student, property owner and journalist. Their musical backgrounds were equally varied. Two considered themselves music ‘professionals’, five ‘amateurs’ already playing in private concerts (one with MBirkô, another with Belaïd), and five ‘still pupils’. Those admitted from 1931 to 1934 were also artisans (painter, shoemaker, tanner, hosier, draftsman), mostly 15–20 years old (Ricard n.d.a, 1936) (Figure 3).

Figure 3. Students at the Conservatory of Arabic [Moroccan] Music, Chottin, director. In L’Afrique du nord illustrée (11 October 1936).

Given that some professors and students were illiterate and there was no Moroccan form of musical transcription, Ricard and Chottin rejected European teaching methods. Echoing his resistance to foreign influences, Ricard felt that solfège ‘responds in no way to the needs of Arab music’ and ‘would be dangerous for Arab music’. Ironically, ‘almost unanimous’ student demand led to starting each class with a short solfège exercise, suggesting a tension between French desire for an authenticity needing protection and Moroccan attraction to the advantages or allure of modernity. As with Ricard's hands-off approach to working with artisans, ‘no unusual intervention would disturb the traditional manner of oral transmission’, no ‘interference intended to perfect the teacher's pedagogical procedures’ (Ricard 1935a). Students learned by listening, including to recordings. As in traditional music apprenticeships, class entailed the teacher's performance of a piece, analysis of its principal characteristics, then students’ recital and repetition of fragments until memorised. Separating beginners from those with some knowledge, Chottin created three groups: preparatory concentrating on rhythmic and melodic types, middle-level learning instruments, advanced studying repertoire (Ricard 1931a, iv; Chottin 1934). As noted in Cairo (see below), Ricard expected pupils to take greater care with the quality of sound production than in traditional practices (Ricard 1932c). Among other new procedures were ‘advance study of the poetic text, rhythm exercises, singing and intonation exercises, study of the instrumental melody and, together, a san’a (singing a poetic stanza, including vocalises and ornaments)’ (Chottin 1931, 13–14; 1939, 222.) Curricular decisions were thus shared, though Moroccans controlled their pedagogy.

Weekly concerts were a regular part of CMM, practice integral to knowledge production and training in public performances. Each Saturday professors played together for an hour, introducing pupils to what their classes would study the following week (Ricard 1932c, 25). Moulay Idriss helped plan the programmes. Open to the public, these attracted a substantial audience, including Gotteland and visiting artists. Besides its concerts for the SIA, an ensemble of faculty and students also played at Moroccan and French receptions and Radio-Maroc, bringing new audiences to the CMM and enhancing its status. Regional music schools, inspired by CMM, soon opened in Fez, Meknes and Marrakech.²²

Music Festivals, 1928–1939

Beginning with the Franco-Moroccan Exhibition in Casablanca (1915), decorative arts fairs in Paris (1917, 1925), colonial exhibitions in Marseille (1922), Strasbourg (1924), and Paris (1931), the Granada festival (1931), and the Cairo congress (1932), the Protectorate supported the participation of Moroccan artisans and musicians. Such efforts also took the form of music festivals devoted to Moroccan music. To attract large mixed audiences, they were programmed alongside other major cultural events. In 1928, Rabat's festival coincided with the Institute's annual Congress (with Ricard on its organising committee and as speaker), the Muslim ‘Mouloud’ Festival, and the Fair where crafts were exhibited and sold and Radio-Maroc had a booth. The Institute's 1933 Congress in Fez took place alongside its Fair. And in 1939, the largest of these in Fez again took place during the artisanal Fair and ‘Mouloud’ Festival. Such synchronicity brought Moroccan music into larger intellectual debates as well as religious and commercial contexts, underlining music's multi-faceted importance and meaning in Moroccan society. Festivals thus established the state of Moroccan music, not just Andalusian, but also Berber and popular genres. Over time, festivals also increased Moroccans’ agency in their organisation and research presentations, reaching parity with Europeans in 1939, stimulated reflection on local distinctions, and fostered respect in national and international contexts.

Rabat

To help them identify Moroccan musicians and build partnerships, in April 1928 Ricard, together with Public Instruction director Gotteland, sponsored ‘Three Days of Moroccan Music’. Ricard and Chottin assembled 50 Moroccan musicians, including the 22-member music society from Oujda, L’Andalousia, the Sultan's musician Jaïdi, and various ensembles. As they studied the current state of Moroccan music, they reflected on how to move forward with its renovation. The first day presented the overall situation, with diverse musical examples; the second, traditional Moroccan music; the third, modern Moroccan music. Concerts in the French-designed garden of the Oudayas and on the patio of the Residence were free. Alongside many dignitaries, almost 3000 Europeans and Moroccans attended.

The challenge was to create concerts that were both inclusive and coherent, most likely Chottin's responsibility. Ricard had advertised this as the first time musicians from all regions of Morocco would perform together – in reality, most were from near Rabat. On the first day, after Ricard's introduction, Chottin (1928) addressed urban and rural, mystical and secular music and instruments of popular and art genres. He illustrated the discussion with an Ahidus air, sung and danced by three Berbers, as well as ‘urban music’ – ghaïta (ġayṭa) airs on the tebol (ṭbal), qacidas and moual sung by women (hadarat [ḥaḍarāt] and chikhate [šiḵāt]) and men (chiakh [šiaḵ]), Andalusian airs and an overture. Day two focused on ‘traditional music’, with L’Andalousia from Oudja and an orchestra of musicians from Fez and Rabat, including Jaïdi, performing Andalusian airs. Audiences also heard songs by eight Berbers from Zemmour (100 km from Rabat), ghaïta airs by musicians from Salé, and qacidas by six female chikhates from Rabat.²³ ‘A very original interlude by a Negro clown from Marrakech’ provided contrast (Ricard 1928, 9).

Day three's concert turned to Moroccan and European, choral and instrumental, classical and modern, old and new music by young and established performers. These juxtapositions called for comparative listening in the French tradition of using concerts to promote understanding of differences (Pasler 2009). This time the concert began and ended with Chottin's Moroccan-inspired compositions, as if modern day Morocco should be framed by a French standpoint. The local military band opened with his warrior march, Dans l’Atlas, based on Berber themes, a reference to France's ongoing attempts to subdue the region. Chottin's popular school choruses, Le Muezzin, performed by his pupils, ended the concert. Between his Berceuse mauresque and Danse nègre came three Andalusian pieces by L’Andalousia. In this context, traditional Moroccan music contrasted with modern hybridity, memory and nostalgia with contemplation of the future.

Chottin got his start as Ménestrel's ‘correspondent’ with his long, evocative review of its 1929 successor, again coinciding with the ‘Mouloud’ festival (1929b). This time, besides he and Ricard, Mohammed Ben Ghabrit (Muhammad Bin Ġabrit), Si Azouaou Mammeri from Marrakech, and the director of the publicity agency Havas organised a concert at the Oudayas. The blind musician Si Mohamed Krombi opened with musettes from the upper remparts of the Kasbah. Ben Ghabrit presented an orchestra of the ‘best musicians from Rabat and Salé’, including a rebab player and Black lutenist. Although not professional, Ben Ghabrit conducted them ‘as if an ensemble worthy of our symphonic phalanxes’ in performances of two nūbas in different modes. Two troops of female chikhate from Rabat and Marrakech followed, together with the master (mâllema) Khadidja in well-received performances of popular qacidas, moual, and aïtas. Chottin (1929b) reached out to Westerners, describing ‘sophisticated aïtas’ as ‘invocations that develop into a kind of Italian overture’. Overall, ‘the sweet and melodious voice of the singers, those from Marrakech especially, made a good impression on listeners’. Chottin devoted substantial space to describing the clown, Hommâne ben Guir, ‘star’ of the show, a real ‘revelation’. Ben Guir could imitate various people ‘with an acute sense of observation’ and a talent for the ‘burlesque and profound that recalls Molière's Scapin’. Finally, a dance-choral troop from Souss, most likely Chleuh, presented ‘raucous’ melodies, danced rhythms, and an orchestra he found ‘both primitive and refined’, the latter otherwise associated with Arab classical music. The ‘enormous fig trees with twisted trunks harmoniously arranged around the terraces’ set the scene for performances of ‘rare charm’ for an audience of ‘thousands’.

On May 24, 1929, the SIA sponsored a Berber festival at the Oudayas. After an Ahidus with 70 Zaïr performers at the base of the remparts, singers, flutists, mimes, and comics from Zemmour, Rabat, Salé, Marrakech, and Meknes performed, each part ending with a danced spectacle from Souss. In 1930 and 1931, the SIA contributed 10,000 francs to support two additional festivals with ‘spectacles analogous to our medieval farces’ and three troops of Chleuh musicians and dancers from Souss, each with 12–15 members (Ricard 1931a, iii–iv). Here Moroccan artists became ‘more self-conscious and surpassed themselves,’ eliciting admiration and respect (Ricard 1930, 28). Such events likely facilitated Chottin's work on Corpus II.

Cairo

Ricard, leading the delegation, and Chottin, CCM director, also took part in Cairo's Congress of Arabic Music (March 14-April 3, 1932) which aimed to grant ‘official consecration’ to this genre and study future directions (Chottin 1933a, 3, 21; Ricard 1932d).²⁴ Patronised by King Fouad of Egypt, it brought together c. 50 ‘Orientalist’ scholars from Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East and c. 100 ‘Oriental artists’ from Iraq, Syria, Turkey and North Africa, the latter, in Ricard's view, ‘conscious of the stagnation of their art’. Representing Morocco were Kaddour Ben Ghabrit, Algerian-born minister and representative of the Sultan, invited by King Fouad, his brother Mohammed Ben Ghabrit, and seven musicians: Jaïdi, CCM professors MBirkô and Ben Youssef, three master musicians from Fez, and the Palace mounchid. Egyptian reviewers found Chottin ‘more or less the only Arabic music specialist among the French delegation’ (W.S. 1932). Member of the Recording Committee, he lectured on diverse genres of Moroccan music, Ben Ghabrit on how he learned music, and Ricard on musical renovation at the CCM.

Moroccans’ exposure here to various Arabic music stimulated reflection on their own practices. La Bourse égyptien praised the Conservatoire de musique marocaine as a model, ‘in sum, what the Egyptian government is currently requesting for Egyptian music’ (W.S. 1932). But, when the Congress's Education Committee recommended that ‘elements of solfege’ (Tonic-Solfa) be taught to children at all levels, eventually replaced by traditional [Western] notation, Ricard and Chottin pushed back. At the CMM, they had largely rejected solfège and piano in training Moroccan musicians (Ricard 1932c, 1935a). Debates in Cairo did not change their minds. Moreover, while colleagues recognised that Morocco's traditional repertoire was rich, albeit using the diatonic scale, unlike in Egypt, some found Moroccan performances lacking the nuances and precision of Egyptian ones (Chottin 1932). Moroccans’ three concerts illustrating Andalusian tradition seemed ‘outdated and anachronistic’ to Egyptians, the 30-minute pieces ‘too long’, leaving them ‘visibly weary’ (Chottin 1933a). Ricard agreed that, even if Moroccan musicians ‘make a strong impression and can provoke a somewhat deep ecstasy’, they don't listen enough to one another and are indifferent to the quality of voices and instruments’. Ricard and Chottin left determined to address this criticism. Furthermore, Ricard felt that ‘Moroccan musicians better understood the goal and meaning of our efforts and returned even more disposed to collaborate on the task of renovation undertaken by their country’ (Ricard c. 1932b, 1936; see also Benabdeljalil 2018).

Fez

In 1933 the Institute held its annual congress in Rabat and Fez (April 13–21), featuring concerts of Andalusian and Chleuh music and, in a village near Sefrou, a Berber spectacle with 500 performing. Chottin notated two improvisations. The global economic crisis interrupted plans to invite many Europeans, including Manuel de Falla. Nonetheless, Bencheneb, from Algiers, spoke on Arabic theatre; Ricard, Baldoui, Jeanne Jouin and two others addressed Moroccan arts there for the first time; Chottin analysed rhythm and meter in Andalusian music in Morocco, Robert Lachmann, from Germany, the state of music in the Near-East. The latter's participation led to publication of Ricard's review and Chottin (1933c) on Moroccan singing in Zeitschrift für Vergleichende Musikwissenschaft.

The first Congress of Moroccan Music (Fez, May 6–10, 1939) – originally called Congress of Andalusian Music – had strong Moroccan support and participation.²⁵ Besides Resident-General Noguès, sponsors included the Sultan, the Pacha of Fez, and Glaoui, Pacha of Marrakech. Noguès's goals recalled Ricard's earlier call for return to sources, performances of Andalusian and Berber traditions, and renovation (Noguès 1939). Like Cairo's Congress, this one attracted foreign orchestras. Negotiating Algerian participation was not easy, as its administrators feared that some musicians might bring ‘panislamic or panarabic’ influences ‘hostile to our domination’. Orchestras from Tlemcen, Algiers and Tunis made it, their expenses covered by the Protectorate; those from Constantine and Blidah did not (Secrétaire-Général 1939). The largest participation was Moroccan. Besides the Sultan's ensemble and three military bands, 16 ensembles from Morocco performed, including Andalusian orchestras at Radio-Maroc and from Fez, and Berber groups from the Moyen and Haut Atlas. The CMM and regional conservatories in Fez and Marrakech also sent performers. With approval from the Sultan and the French Consulate in Tetouan, an orchestra from the Spanish zone, specialising in Andalusian music, was invited, and one from Tangiers, though both fell through at the last minute. Nonetheless, twelve from Tetouan attended. Their presence was important as Tetouan's population, like those who later settled in Fez, had fled Grenada in the fifteenth century. Moreover, organisers clearly wanted representation from all Morocco.

As in Cairo, many foreigners came to deliver papers. Its Propaganda Committee, which met all spring, had six French and five Moroccan members. At first they intended to invite 90 from Europe, 30 from Algeria, and 20–30 from Tunisia, plus orchestra members. Chottin recommended various Orientalists, including Neghib Nahas from Alexandria, Manoubi Snoussi from Tunis, and Jules Rouanet from Algiers. While apparently they didn't come, four Europeans on his list gave presentations.²⁶ Others attended without giving papers, including Salah Arzour, speaker of Arabic broadcasts on Radio-Alger, Marcelle Schweitzer, composer from Algiers, and, recommended by the Parisian historian Funk-Bretano, many composers and critics from France, the latter expected to write reviews in the French press (Comité de Coordination 1939).²⁷

Speaker participation involved significant parity among Moroccans and Europeans. The Congress's initial purpose was to analyse Andalusian music, seek out its most characteristic musical manifestations, and prepare recordings of what should be preserved. Its Planning Committee had six Moroccan and six French members with the Sultan's representative as president; Chottin and Ahmed ben Ghabrit were secretaries. The Organisation and Publicity Committee similarly had four each, with Moroccan and French secretaries. In addition, Chottin took part in the Subcommittee on Andalusian music, the only Westerner alongside Jaïdi, Ahmed ben Ghabrit, and three other Moroccans. Balance of Moroccan and European presenters also characterised the papers, with no sessions without both: 15 Moroccans (Moulay Idriss, Mammeri and Zeghari each presented two), 10 French (Chottin gave three, Féline two) and four others (with Zerrouki from Tlemcen on medieval Andalusian music). This participation testified to the vastly increased interest in Moroccan music since 1928. In a session in Arabic, four Moroccans discussed aspects of the Andalusian tradition (Moulay Idriss from Rabat, El Filali, El Fassi and Zeghari from Fez), followed by Chottin on ‘Arabic music in the East and the West’ and Ben Daoud on Arabic-Berber music in North Africa. These encouraged Arabic-speaking attendees to reflect on emerging regional identity.

The Congress also drew attention to other topics. Discussed in the Coordination Committee's meeting in February 1939 were Jewish music and melhoun (malḥūn), but also of interest were other popular genres and music outside the Protectorate. In committee discussions, El Fassi, Mohammed ben Ghabrit, and Si Mammeri called Jewish music ‘classical music deformed by the singers’ Israeli accent’. Vicaire pointed out that some Jewish musicians performed Andalusian repertoire not preserved by Muslims (Comité de Propagande 1939). In his talk, Chottin focused on Andalusian music in the synagogue and comparative music terminology across North Africa. This was significant, first, because study of Jewish music was rare at the time, despite its connection to the Andalusian tradition, and, second, because even rarer were studies that looked beyond national boundaries.

Beloved of urban elites, including El Fassi, melhoun, sung poetry developed in southern Morocco, drew on Andalusian modes. Under pressure from Moroccans on its advisory committee, Radio-Maroc had been broadcasting the genre since late 1937. A special session in Fez, devoted to melhoun, featured talks by Mammeri from Marrakech (on its chikhates), Bahnini, Zaghari and Ba Heninni from Fez. There was also one on Moroccan Berber music, with Moulay Idriss speaking on Bedouin songs in Chaouïa and Tadla, Berberologist Arsène Roux on Berber music of central Morocco, and singers from the Grand Atlas and Beni-M'Tir. On the Arabic session, Moulay Idriss examined aïta, griha, and mystical music, showing how they differed from both Andalusian and Berber music. Patronico Garcia Barriuso, a Franciscan in Tangiers known for his work renovating Hispano-Muslim music, shared his transcriptions of music from the Spanish zone and published a chronicle of the event in Spanish, later a book.²⁸ And Raphael Arevalo, Rabati professor, spoke on Andalusian music in Tetouan. When he opened the Congress, Gotteland noted, ‘Since the accomplishments of the last ten years, Moroccan music has captured the place it is due in the social life and cultural development of this country’. Citing Chottin's just-published Tableau de la musique marocaine, he hoped that this music has ‘finally entered into its triumphant period of creative evolution’ (Le petit marocain, May 7).

Important also, as in Rabat's 1928 festival, was balance between Andalusian and Berber performances, along with inclusion of modern music. In an outdoor garden after the Arabic session (May 7), audiences heard three Andalusian orchestras, followed by three Berber ensembles, including the Chleuh, then at the Fair, an evening concert of Andalusian music. After the session on popular genres (May 9), introduced by Chottin in French, El Fassi in Arabic, came an afternoon concert from work songs, lullabies, and processional music to guembri players from Fez and melhoun from Marrakech. The evening featured Chleuh and Central Moroccan performers, then Andalusian music by three ensembles. Similarly on May 10, Berber singers performed before two Andalusian ensembles. Such juxtapositions projected notions of harmonious national identity for the world stage, more ambitious than realistic.

French concert practices permeated the festival's concert organisation. As in 1928, many used one group or genre as frame, with contrast in the middle. For example, in the first concert (May 6) at the Batha Palace, Moroccan orchestras from Fez and Marrakech surrounded those from Tunis, Algiers and Tlemcen. The afternoon concert of Andalusian and Berber music (May 7) began and ended with military bands, as if a French context ‘protecting’ both urban and rural Morocco, as did the Sultan's band in that role on May 10. Many concerts presented opportunities to compare various approaches to Andalusian music. On May 7 and 8, orchestras from Fez, Tlemcen, Tunis and Oudja (or Algiers) performed and the three Moroccan conservatory ensembles. On May 10, following ‘new music’ by Tazi's orchestra that afternoon came the final gala, entitled ‘new forms of Moroccan music’. These were exemplified in (1) excerpts from two nūbas transcribed for and performed by a Western orchestra, conducted by Robert Barras of Radio-Maroc, with Mohammed ben Ghabrit and Hadj Hamed Doukkali, (2) European music of ‘Moroccan inspiration’, i.e. compositions by Mény de Marangue and Chottin, then (3) Andalusian music performed by five ensembles from Fez to Tunis. With a return of the Sultan's band to close the Congress, listeners were left with contemplating the rich diversity and potential of the Andalusian tradition, after which, symbolically, the Sultan had the last word.²⁹

War was imminent in Europe. France needed to tighten ties with local people and bind its colonies to the mainland. At the Festival's opening, the local press depicted General Noguès and the Sultan's representative together, an image of shared power. Radio-Maroc broadcast opening speeches and nightly concerts. The Resident-General was convinced that the Muslim community would respond positively to Congress. Bernard 1939 praised it as ‘one of the most eloquent symbols of France's colonial politics’, showing ‘French respect for the traditions’ of their colonised people. In over a dozen reviews, French composers and critics underlined French support for Moroccan music and, by extension, its people. Through its collaborative organisation and parity in representing Moroccan and European perspectives, this festival embodied an alliance between political authorities and production of knowledge, linking France and Morocco through mutual interest in Morocco's musical heritage.

New Media and New Identities

French power and priorities manifested especially in the media, but evolved substantially in the 1930s. Beginning in 1928, the call for aural documentation led to recordings. Regular live concerts of Moroccan music on Radio-Maroc built on and spurred creation of new Moroccan ensembles, unlike in Algeria where Glasser (2016, 212) suggests that French interventions regarding the ‘patrimonial cause’ arose in competition with local musical associations. Radio-Maroc provided broad dissemination, unprecedented, stable employment, and legitimation for practice-based knowledge. Broadcasts shaped public taste and encouraged reflection on new identities – national, North-African, and hybrid. Along with lectures, compositions and publications in the popular press, Chottin used his organisational role to contribute to these goals, while seeking commonalities between Moroccans and Westerners.

Recordings and Radio

Already in 1927, Ricard was collaborating with the Archives de la Parole in Paris, and Chottin willing to transcribe Moroccan recordings for publication by Editions Geuthner. Taking advantage of the Berber Festival in Rabat in the spring 1929 and the SIA's subsidy for the future ‘Museum of Moroccan Music’, they organised recording of almost 120 examples of Moroccan music in the courtyard of the Oudayas museum. Evidently Pathé, already with substantial Moroccan recordings by 1926 and envisaged as co-collaborator, would have to go through various French ministries. Two commercial competitors were used instead.

Here, as elsewhere, representing diversity was a priority. Columbia (American) recorded ten artists and groups, mostly from around Rabat, including Saharan musician Ben Yahia, two blind musicians, and the Sultan's Black Guard. These performed bitaïn, aïtas, qacidas, moual, Andalusian music, and wind-band arrangements. Odéon (German) made 51 records, that is, of a popular group from Marrakech (16), Raïs Sasbou's ensemble, later studied in Chottin's Corpus II (7), another Chleuh group (11), an Andalusian group from Fez (6), three Berber groups from Zemmour (5), a comic from Marrakech, probably Hommane Ben Guir (3) and ‘Negro musicians from Souss’ (1) (Ricard 1936). Surprisingly, only eight were of Andalusian music perhaps because audiences could hear this music live on Radio-Maroc. Soon, the SIA was working with Pathé. Its July 1930 catalogue lists not only Chottin's Franco-Arabic choruses, Le Muezzin, and his Barcarolle orientale, but also five records (33,076–33,080) that El Hadj Abdelslam Errbati's troop made of eight pieces from the Nouba de Ochchäk, perhaps another source for Chottin's Corpus I (1931).

From the beginning, Chottin curated Radio-Maroc's broadcasts of Moroccan music. Concerts during the 1928 festival, aired a few days before the station's official inauguration on April 15, 1928, set a precedent for including ‘Arabic music’. Thereafter, the SIA paid him to choose singers, instrumentalists, and repertoire for 30-minute concerts each Wednesday. In December, Moroccan elites petitioned for more such broadcasts. To expand them to twice weekly, Gotteland budgeted 6000 francs, later 10,000 francs. In 1931 Chottin was hired to choose recordings. But in 1932, Khiat and Mohammed Ben Ghabrit joined Chottin and Ricard in choosing recordings for these broadcasts. These not only documented current musical practices, they made possible eventual comparisons across North Africa.

Organised by Chottin, the first full-scale ‘concert’ on Radio-Maroc took place on 25 August 1932. It featured the ‘most representative and well-chosen examples of Moroccan music’ to ‘edify and improve public taste’ (Margot 1932a). These programmes regularly featured CMM's ensemble, conducted by MBirkô. In October, their name changed to ‘Concert de musique andalouse’, reflecting repertoire taught at the CMM (Ricard 1928, 13; Chottin 1934). As in the artisan industry, where new markets were crucial to success, for years CMM used these broadcasts to reach a public as far as Paris and Chicago, vaunting the fruits of French cultural action among culturally-minded Westerners.

For both Chottin and those performing Andalusian music in private contexts, radio performances offered new work, income, and public distinction. Beginning in September 1932, Chottin received 300 francs/month to recruit musicians, establish programmes, and ‘oversee (surveiller)’ performances (Margot 1932a, 1932b). The five musicians of CMM's orchestra each received 25 francs per performance, 500 francs/month for the ensemble. After a 1932 committee report recommended a regular Saturday ‘orchestre arabe aliyine’, Radio-Maroc's budget increased to 40 francs per performer for 52 weeks (10,400 francs), and 3000 francs for 100 recordings. In 1934, when Mbirkô left CMM to form his own orchestra at Radio-Maroc and concert broadcasts expanded to four days/week, CMM's orchestra, ‘under Chottin's direction’, conducted by Bel Khadir, continued its Andalusian repertoire on Saturday nights. During Ramadan, Chottin organised daily concerts on Radio-Maroc. Recognising their popularity with Moroccans, increasingly administrations of both Sultan Affairs and Indigenous Affairs sponsored these concerts.

In March 1936, Radio-Maroc created new studios in Marrakech and Fez, alongside those in Rabat and Casablanca. Chottin's responsibilities expanded, his compensation now 1000 francs/month. With SIA's help, local SIA branches sponsored studio ensembles. MBirkô, Bel Khadir, and Baroudi (Barūdi) conducted in Rabat; Korriche (Kurriš) and El Brihi in Fez; Khiai (Ḵiai) and El Oughdache (Ūġdaš) in Marrakech; and Kniber (Knībir) in Casablanca. In 1937, Moroccans were given majority control of Radio-Maroc's new advisory committee. Their first action was to increase broadcasts of ‘Arabic music’ to nightly by one of these ensembles. With concerts from four studios, Radio-Maroc could respond to the Protectorate's increasing desire for a culturally-integrated Morocco and, with Andalusian music, an identity shared across its North-African empire.

Radio-Maroc's broadcasts also contributed to identities embodying coexistence of difference, some involving hybridity. Here, hybrid means belonging to two entities simultaneously or in conversation. Table 1 shows the programme of four concerts, 1936–1938, with various sponsors – the Institute, Friends of Radio-Maroc (inaugurating its new symphonic orchestra), Resident-General Noguès and the Arbéris society (with Moroccan Arabists, Berberists, and Islamicists), and the Festival of the Throne (created in 1933 by nationalists supporting the Sultan). On 25 February, Casablanca's Conservatory orchestra with 36 Westerners performed alongside CMM's ensemble expanded to 12 performers. In 1938, Andalousian ensembles gathered from throughout Morocco plus Tunisia and Tlemcen, Algeria, offering aural comparisons across geographical and cultural borders. These, among other similar concerts, invited audiences to contemplate what each brought to North-African identity. Such diverse sponsors and ensembles suggest new Franco-Moroccan Relations, with potential political resonance.

Each of these concerts featured Andalusian music, performed by traditional Moroccan ensembles alternating with transcriptions/adaptations of this music, mostly by Chottin, harmonised, translated into French, and performed by Western ensembles. At intermission, Chottin lectured on Andalusian music, adding that his transcriptions were intended to further understanding of Moroccans’ ‘spirit and heart’. In presenting the same songs played by Moroccans and Westerners, were concert organisers hoping listeners would grasp musical connections, elements in common? Or did performance by Western instruments help Westerners understand what was characteristically Moroccan therein? Possibly such concerts reflected the ‘wish for dialogue’ between the French Front Populaire, in power since May 3, 1936, and Moroccan nationalists (Hajji 2007, 317–322).

In traversing cultural boundaries while respecting distinctions and promoting bi-cultural understanding of ‘Arabic music’, Chottin used his own music to reconfigure traditional borders. His Moroccan-inspired orchestral music, like Scènes marocaines and Sur les terrasses (dance on the rhythm of a Berber Ahidus), suggest how Andalusian and Berber traditions might harmoniously interact and co-exist in a Western context (Le petit marocain, February 7, 22, 25, 1937). As during the Fez festival's final concert, similar juxtapositions alluded to French desire for a role in Morocco's future through not just notation of its art music, but also coordinated efforts to bring into Western and North-African music into conversation.

Radio-Maroc also broadcast Berber music. A 1933 festival, from Sefrou, featured songs by 60 Berbers; in 1935 broadcasts included chikhates and Chleuh singers. By July 1938 Marrakech's broadcasts included a Berber ensemble, conducted by El Ougdach. Thereafter, songs of various Berbers – Chleuh, Glaoua, Haha and Souktana – appeared on Radio-Maroc. French listeners appreciated these programmes, perhaps more accessible than Andalousian music.³⁰ Beginning in 1945, Radio-Maroc produced émissions berbères three days a week until their second station offered Berber dialects regularly. Like Andalusian genres, Berber music, given related Amazigh language dialects across the region, also bridged North-African differences.³¹

Chottin remained ‘musical advisor’ of Moroccan orchestras on Radio-Maroc through at least 1939, serving on advisory committees with majority Moroccan members. In June 1939 the overseeing committee asked him to establish its music programmes a month in advance. Some wished to encourage ‘modern Moroccan music’ with prizes. Chottin was charged with recruiting and training Moroccan musicians in this domain. These activities led to further expansion and jobs for CMM musicians on Radio-Maroc during and after the war. To understand the impact of these institutions on Moroccan music, we await historical studies by Moroccan musicologists as well as further research on the musicians involved in these collaborations.

Post-War Public Education and New Alliances

The Protectorate's agendas depended on European as well as Moroccan support. For decades, Chottin wrote about Moroccan music in local and European journals. If earlier these were largely colonial periodicals, based in France, by the 1940s they included local newspapers, where he published columns and multi-partite articles, often derived from his previous publications. Weekly installments in Pique-Boeuf (1941–1942) began with ‘Andalusian music and us’, then articles on Moroccan popular theatre and monthly installments of his 1928 lecture, ‘Faces of Moroccan Music’. The newspaper's front pages featured large illustrations of Berber dance spectacles and Kasbahs, artisans at work and Moroccan pottery. Chottin himself appears on the cover in May 1942, his last essay addressing ‘Franco-Moroccan Harmony.’ In spring 1949, drawing on his Tableau de la musique marocaine, Chottin wrote a column, ‘Arabic Music’, in Hebdo-Radio, a magazine for radio listeners, including musical examples and choreographic drawings.

Complementing Chottin's articles in Hebdo-Radio, from 1946 to 1951 Prosper Ricard delivered almost 200 lectures on Radio-Maroc about ‘Moroccan arts and artisanat.’ These included ‘Effects of music, according to Muslims’, ‘Listening to Andalusian music’, ‘The legend of the lute’, Zerrouki on Western and Arabic music, and the composer Manual de Falla. From 1948–1951, Ricard also published similar articles in the Journal des instituteurs de l’Afrique du Nord. Meanwhile, Chottin prepared a second volume of Berber music for his Corpus, Songs of the Zemmour, never published (Chottin c.1949), Ricard produced volume 5 of his Corpus des tapis marocains (1950) and an edition in colour (1951).

While the SIA shifted focus in the 1940s to producing utilitarian goods and promoting exports (Mokhiber 2013, 276), French partnerships with Moroccan musicians expanded through two new alliances, conceived by Chottin. In 1948, when Radio-Maroc began to broadcast from two stations, Chottin and CMM professor Bel Khadir created the ‘Orchestre franco-marocain de musique andalouse’, allying modern and traditional music. Going further than hybrid concerts, it aimed to create new sonorities from the clarinet, saxophone, oboe, and piano performing with Moroccan rebab, lute, and kamanja. For Chottin, this brought together European discipline (from written tradition) with the Arab talent for improvisation (from oral tradition), as if to explore the possibility of Franco-Moroccan complementarity, from a French perspective. Radio-Maroc regularly broadcast its concerts, and, as it addresssed the evolution of Andalusian music, programmed it on the Station for Moroccans (Chottin 1948) (Figure 4).

Figure 4. Franco-Arabic Orchestra of Andalousian Music, with Chottin standing. Bulletin publié par le Service des émissions en langue arabe de Radio-Maroc (1948).

Distressed at CMM's diminished state after the war and beginning to think that North-African art and culture ‘should be directed toward the West, instead of the Middle East’, Chottin also proposed creation of an intercultural ‘Institute of Modern Arabic Music’. Taught by Bel Khadir, Balafreij, Si Jouini from Tunisia, a mâlema from Fez, and a European singing teacher, students would include Moroccans and young North Africans who knew traditional music, but wished to create original genres inspired by jazz, classical European, popular Spanish, or Hindu music. This Institute would teach traditional Moroccan instruments as well as those of the Western orchestra and jazz, ancient and classical Arabic musical forms alongside classical and modern European music. ‘Renovation’ would be accomplished, first, by rendering ‘audible’ ‘the best pieces of the ancient repertoire’, perfecting performance quality and interpretation of the words;’ second, by ‘creating new works’, such as Chottin's ‘abdou-tango’, incorporating melodies dictated by Balafreij. Crucial would be the Institute's liaisons with other institutions, including those producing film and radio in the United States. As Chottin (c.1949) conceived it, this new institution would transform the production of the knowledge and practice by North Africans, trained in multiple musical traditions. It's not clear this Institute materialised.

Conclusions and Legacy

From Arab elites’ desire to maintain their status to the outsized ambitions of Glaoui, Chleuh Pacha of Marrakech, complex political motivations aligned Moroccans with the French. To the extent that musical practices contributed to shared agendas, these alliances facilitated collaborations and co-production of knowledge. Through negotiating their various modes of expertise, they both accrued benefits. To understand this, we need to study the local and individual dimensions of the period, examining interactions between Ricard and Chottin, them and Moroccans, as Glissant's Relations, documented in Ricard's archives and other little-known sources. Each emerged transformed and audiences given much to reflect on, with important implications for the future.

As in traditional craft industries, the French brought organisational skills, entrepreneurship and patronage (Irbouh 2005, 221), while imposing European notions of discipline, work and supervision. Through concerts, journalism, and media, Ricard and Chottin deployed French power over the public sphere to promote Moroccan music in national and international contexts. From these, Chottin grew professionally as institutional leader, concert organiser, ethnographic researcher, and music critic. In using their authority to shape policy and access to Moroccan musical traditions, he and Ricard became life-long, devoted advocates. Meanwhile, in helping Moroccan music thrive, the Protectorate garnered esteem locally and abroad, advancing its agenda to imbue influence ‘as important and consequential’ as the ‘adoption of Islam’ (Ricard 1930, 31).

For their part, Moroccan musicians commanded deep connection to their past tied in part to established communities of practice, creativity and improvisation from the oral tradition, and considerable savoir-faire. With dominance over pedagogy and performance at the CCM, they brought credibility and legitimacy to its production of musical knowledge and practice, as in contemporary theories of co-production between practitioners and policy-makers. In turn, Chottin introduced them to new approaches to their music and helped them build careers, especially in new ensembles on Radio-Maroc. By the late 1930s, Moroccans had majority control of Radio-Maroc's advisory committee, were performing nightly on Radio-Maroc, and had reached parity with Europeans in the organisation and analytical presentations of the Fez festival. Their partnership in publications, CMM, festivals, and radio ensured that their musical traditions, previously limited to kinship groups, became accessible to all Moroccans, leading to growing public taste.

These collaborations – through discourse, publications, and performances by musicians of different backgrounds, languages, and social orders – not only led to new understanding of Moroccan music and expanded markets, but also contributed to new, dynamic identities – what it meant to be European and Moroccan in modern colonial culture. In 1928–1929, Ricard and Chottin showcased the diversity of Moroccan society, bringing wide-ranging performers, many little-known, into the public sphere through concerts and recordings. In 1939, they included melhoun and participants discussed Jewish and ‘Spanish-Muslim’ music, previously ignored by outsiders.

As shown here, of central importance to the French were Andalusian and Chleuh music. Although, in practice, these were mutually exclusive – the former performed indoors for bourgeois gatherings, the latter outdoors for community celebrations – and they represented different histories, classes and lifestyles, Ricard and Chottin were determined to place them side-by-side. Although conceived to focus on Andalusian music, even the Fez festival included Berber ensembles, sometimes in parity. This aural coexistence, imposed by organisers, offered opportunities for cross-cultural listening, mutual understanding being necessary for nation-building.

Ricard's and Chottin's interest in hybrid identities arose from working in the context of difference – diversity of race, ethnicity, class, gender and musical traditions – not trying to efface it, but respect it. Hybridity characterised Andalusian music, with its Spanish and Middle Eastern roots calling on dialogue between past and present. Furthermore, concerts with Andalusian ensembles from across Morocco and neighbouring Algeria and Tunisia stimulated reflection on what was shared across France's North-African empire. So too hybridity in Chottin's transcriptions and compositions inspired by Moroccan music, concerts on Table 1, and ensembles like the Orchestre franco-marocain functioned not to foreground difference to dominate it, but rather to seek out connections, thereby making audible French ambitions of productive coexistence with Morocco's diverse populations.

These Franco-Moroccan partnerships and Moroccan musicians, who found new outlets in these collaborations, created a significant legacy. In its privileging of the Andalusian tradition, the methods it developed, and the personnel it trained, the CMM laid the foundation for conservatories established by the Minister of Culture throughout the country following independence. Today most teach Andalusian music.³² Chottin's study and inclusion of Berber musicians in festivals and on Radio-Maroc, far less recognised, were arguably equally important, anticipating the recent ‘linguistic and cultural recognition’ of the Amazigh people in the 1990s. The Institut Royal de la Culture Amazighe (IRCAM), founded in 2001, called for ‘reclaiming pre-Islamic history’ and ‘the construction of a modern Amazigh cultural heritage’ (Lakhsassi 2006, 115–123). In 2011, Amazigh (Tamazight) became Morocco's second national language, alongside Arabic. French advocacy for balance among Moroccan traditions set a precedent for government-sponsored music festivals, in 2012–2016 showcasing Amazigh Ahidus and Ahwach, Andalusian ‘Tarab Al-Ala’, women's aïta, and popular song. Contemporary Moroccans have thus incorporated this history into their own. My purpose is both to give voice to the many Moroccan musicians who played major roles in it, albeit long forgotten, and to contribute to accurate deconstruction.

Abbreviations

ADN: Centre des Archives diplomatiques de Nantes

ANM: Archives Nationales du Maroc

ANOM: Archives d'Outre-mer, Aix-en-Provence

CCM: Conservatoire de Musique Marocaine

PRC: Prosper Ricard Collection, ANM

SIA: Service of Indigenous Arts.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 Archives Nationales du Maroc (ANM), F 140.

2 Since independence, North African history has been used to legitimate power or was held ‘hostage to partisan or ideological perspectives’, focused on the ‘struggle against colonialism and the war for independence’ as well as ‘the heroic Algerian people’ (Mohand-Amer 2021).

3 The theory of co-production arose in the 1970s to describe relations between providers and users of goods and services, recently extended to policy makers and practitioners, the latter ranging from informants to co-researchers. Currently, it also connotes ‘the contribution of multiple knowledge sources and capacities from different stakeholders’ (Djenontin and Meadow 2018). See also Lemos and Morehouse (2005).

4 https://www.constituteproject.org/constitution/Morocco_2011.pdf

5 Calderwood 2018 argues for the role played by Spain in this ‘modern invention’, especially during civil war (1936–1939) when General Franco exploited the Spanish Muslim past.

6 Glasser (2016, 217) concludes that, in Algeria today, ‘Andalusi music represents an element of continuity with the late colonial era’, but explains this as ‘the presence of people’ who straddled both eras.

7 Similarly, see Répertoire de musique arabe et maure, recueillie par M. Edmond Nathan-Yafil sous la direction de Jules Rouanet (Alger: Yafil, 1904–1923), with Muhammad bin ‘Ali Sfindja as informant, and Rodophe Erlanger, La Musique Arabe, 6 vols. (Paris: Geuthner, 1930–1959), produced in collaboration with Antonin Laffage, Manoubi Snoussi, Iskander Chalfoun, and Cheikh Ali Derwiche.

8 These echo the mechanisms of Sheila Jasanoff 2004's theory of co-production.

9 See also Born 2010's ‘relational’ musicology, which argues for studying ‘relations between social orders’.

10 In 1925 in Fez alone, the Protectorate spent over 100,000 francs on its six medersas. ANM, F142.

11 In Algeria, Glasser 2016 ties this decay to the ‘temporality of a tradition’, ‘lost completeness’, and ‘threads that tie the living to the dead’ (9, 96, 233).

12 Earlier, Mény de Marangue also collected, transcribed, harmonised Moroccan music and used it in compositions.

13 Not to be confused with schools of Western music in Casablanca (fd. 1917) and Rabat (fd. 1928). Today CMM, with c. 100 students, is known as the Ecole de musique andalouse, Moulay Rchid, after its tiny street in the medina.

14 In Algiers, such training occurred within private music societies.

15 Menger 2009, 218; 251 and Pasler 2020.

16 Chottin wrote for the most important colonial publications – Outre-Mer (1929), Annales coloniales (1935), L’Encyclopédie coloniale et maritime (1948) – and the major music journals – Ménestrel (1931–1933), Revue musicale (1940) and Revue de musicologie (1934, 1936).

17 Very different from the increasing separation of these genres in Europe (Gelbart 2007, chapter 3)

18 Irbouh (2005, 30–31) assumes rural crafts were ‘always immutable’, like the ‘fossilized’ crafts of Arabs, neither true in Moroccan music.

19 Discussing the Algerian Andalusian tradition, Glasser (2016, 219) links the ‘choking of the melodies in ornamentation’ to the ‘lack of notation’, a long-term problem reiterated through the 1960s.

20 By 1934, Ricard reported the following statistics: in Fez 4000 artisans and 95 professional musicians, of which 7 female music teachers with 28 female aides; in Meknes 1233 artisans, of which 11 female music teachers and 55 apprentices; in Marrakech 4800 artisans, of which c. 200 Muslim and Jewish singers, instrumentalists, and story-tellers and 100 female instrumentalists and singers, mostly Muslim. Among others, this totaled over 12,000 artisans in the major Moroccan cities, that is, up to a quarter of the families living there (Ricard 1934b). Earlier, Boutet 1930 reports around 50 female chikhates in Marrakech, divided into Arab and Berber groups.

21 Ciucci (2012b) assumes aïta was ignored until recently, blaming urban Arabic elites, whose culture, under the Protectorate, she presumes, ‘suffered the most under colonization precisely because it did not reflect the image of Moroccan backwardness’ (121)—untenable as here shown—or Moroccan nationalists who viewed ‘traditional culture as a symbol of Morocco's backwardness’.

22 For fuller analysis of the CMM, these schools, their teachers, and pupils, see Pasler 2021.

23 Ciucci has underestimated the attention French settlers played to female chikhates, positing that the Protectorate denigrated and degraded their sung poetry (aïta), little understood because ‘the colonizers … did not speak Arabic and could not understand the texts … where the real meaning resides’ (2012a, 80; 2012b, 120, 123). In 1924, at the Société française de musicologie in Paris, Marie-Thérèse de Lens, Meknes musicologist and singer in Arabic who accompanied her songs on Moroccan instruments, discussed female ‘chikhates’ in Meknes, including in local harems, their ‘secret’ wedding and funeral songs, and qacidas using augmented seconds (1920, 142–143; A.S. 1924). As shown here, Chottin included their music at the CMM and in the 1928, 1929, and 1939 festivals. Professor of Arabic, he spoke it fluently, as did Ricard.

24 See studies by Ali Jihad Racy and Salwa el-Shawan.

25 Archival sources for the festival are dispersed and partial. See sources cited herein.

26 Eugène Borrel spoke on Moroccan scales, Claudie Marcel-Dubois on Moroccan flutes, Mady Humbert-Sauvageot on polyphony in exotic music, and Gaston Knosp on Oriental music developments. Colonel Pierre Féline, residing in Rabat, addressed rhythm in Moroccan music and Egyptian music's influences on Moroccan music.

27 Composers Georges Auric, Robert Bernard, Florent Schmitt, and Charles Koechlin (who presented on modes); critics Henri Gilles (Gil-Marchex), M. de Lansaye, Pierre Leroy, and Paul Locard; and their wives.

28 La Musica hispano-musulmana en Marruecos, Tanger: Instituto Granco, 1941. Calderwood (2018, 235) explains, ‘the Spanish felt that the French were encroaching on a piece of Spain's national patrimony’.

29 In contrast to this interpretation, Glasser (2016, 213) suggests that ‘fusion’ was the goal here, that ‘to undertake effective fusion, there must be a clear conceptual separation of the practices that are to be brought together.’

30 ‘Radio et folklore au Maroc’, France Outre-Mer (August 20, 1937).

31 For more about music on Radio-Maroc, see Pasler 2014 and 2021.

32 For example, Rabat, Kenitra, Fez, Tetouan, Tanger, Larache, Chefchaouen, Ksar El Kébir, Marrakech, Meknes, Safi, Essaouira, and Salé. https://www.minculture.gov.ma/fr/?p=562