Performing ‘L-ʿalwa’: a sacred and erotic journey in Morocco

ABSTRACT

‘L-ʿalwa’, a sung poem whose text recounts the pilgrimage to a saint’s shrine in Morocco, is celebrated for its ability to convey images and emotions stirred up by the sacred journey. As part of the repertory of ʿaiṭa—a genre of sung poetry from the Moroccan plains and plateaus traditionally performed by professional female singer-dancers [shikhat] and nowadays categorised as popular music [shʿabi]—‘L-ʿalwa’ presents an interesting case study through which it is possible to analyse the porosity between local constructions of the sacred and the secular in relation to a genre which is not explicitly associated with the sacred or with sacred performances. My analysis of salient moments of a performance of ‘L-ʿalwa’ at a wedding celebration in Morocco explores how the shikhat move across the sacred and the secular, and the central role that eroticism [ghram or mshka] plays in the porosity between these categories in performance.

KEYWORDS:

• Morocco
• sung poetry
• female performers
• sakәn
• ʿaiṭa
• eroticism

Acknowledgements

I owe a debt of gratitude to the troupe of the Ouled Ben Aguida whose performance and conversations informed this article. Special thanks to Rachid ʿAbdellatif, Mohammed al-Sawti al-Bahlouli and Hassan Najmi who kindly accompanied me to visit L-ʿalwa and who generously shared their time and knowledge about the site and ‘L-ʿalwa’. Thanks are also due to the two anonymous reviewers, whose insightful comments helped my rethinking of this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Note on contributor

Alessandra Ciucci is Assistant Professor of Music (Ethnomusicology) at Columbia University. She received her PhD in music (ethnomusicology) from the City University of New York at the Graduate Center. Her research interests include the music of Morocco, North Africa, the Mediterranean, music and migration, music and gender, sung poetry and the popular music of North Africa. Her articles appear in Ethnomusicology, The Yearbook for Traditional Music, The International Journal of Middle East Studies, Mondi Migranti and Cahiers de musiques traditionnelles, and in several edited volumes.

ORCID

Alessandra Ciucci http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5954-4641

Notes

1 In my rendering of the colloquial Arabic used in everyday life in Morocco I have adopted the IJMES (International Journal of Middle East Studies) system for consonants. For vowels, I have diverged from this system, because in Moroccan Arabic the differences in vowel length are not as distinctive as in standard Arabic. In order to represent Moroccan pronunciation, I have employed full vowels (a, u and i) and short vowels (ə, o and e). Because so many French and English forms and transliterations have become standard, place names, tribes and proper names are written as they have been conventionally transliterated in Morocco. I have kept the letter ayn (ʿ) in all of these transliterations. Spellings used by other authors are retained when I reference or quote their publications.

2 Notwithstanding the differences in meaning between wali, murabiṭ [someone connected to a ribaṭ or a Sufi lodge], ṣaliḥ [virtuous or pious], sidi [master, lord, mister] and mulay [title given to a descendent of the Prophet Mohammed] (Cornell 1998; Reysoo 1991; Rhani 2013), all of these terms are used as synonyms for saint in Morocco. The use of the term saint, however, must be understood in reference to Islam—as the friend of God who is also the protector and patron of lesser Muslims, not to be confused with the Christian concept of sainthood (Cornell 1998: xvii–xxxiii; Zeghal 2009: 589).

3 The term shʿabi [from shʿab, lit. folk, people] in Morocco has been discussed by a number of scholars: Jeff Callen, translates it as ‘popular’ in the sense ‘of the people’ (2006: 31–2); Tarik Sabry posits that it refers to its working-class audience and, implicitly, their listening modes (2010: 54–7); Brian Karl defines it as a meta-genre, as a ‘highly absorbent and somewhat fluid category of cultural practice that subsumed or intertwined with a great number of other distinct genres or sub-genres’ (2012: 17); and Lhoussain Simour argues for its critical role in understanding the heterogeneous character of Moroccan identity (2016: 7–20).

4 Recognising the popularity of ‘L-ʿalwa’ in Morocco, a number of authors have cited this sakәn prior to my discussion. Deborah Kapchan quotes a number of verses from ‘L-ʿalwa’, but she does not identify it is a sakən nor its sacred association or location when she writes that l-ʿalwa, the heights, is a metaphor for the city (1996: 202). Jésus Aguila and Mokhtar Zagzoule, on the other hand, identify the association with the sacred in their discussion of ‘L-ʿalwa’, but they mistakenly associate it with the pilgrimage to Sidi ʿOmar ben Laḥsen (2000: 178–9). Allal Raggoug describes ‘L-ʿalwa’ as a simplified ‘aiṭa which renders homage to different saints of the Casablanca-Settat region in Morocco. Raggoug recognises its association with the sacred, and also states that ‘L-ʿalwa’ has become popular thanks to a number of performers, and that is constantly requested by the audiences and associated with trance (2008: 52–3).

5 For a collection of these poems, see al-Wazzāʿ (2008).

6 Maria Curtis (2015: 329) discusses the role of women ancestors of Moulay ʿAbdessalam Ibn Mashish in northern Morocco who sing a sung poetry called ‘ayoua which they think of as being unique to those villages closest to the shrine.

7 The people of the region considered the rendition by a male performer of ʿaiṭa, Ould Qaddour, as the best. According to my Moroccan interlocutors, Qaddour's knowledge of the geography and of the location of each shrine is what makes the pilgrimage ‘correct’ and his rendition of this sakən the most successful.

8 Al-Jazouli (d. 1465), a seminal Moroccan Sufi saint, encouraged his followers to visit Moroccan saints when the pilgrimage to Mecca was impossible. It is argued that such a notion helped to establish a local Moroccan spiritual authority generated by the baraka of local saints (Amster 2013: 21–2; Cornell 1998: 180; Nabti 2010: 139). On another ‘pilgrimage of the poor’ in Morocco, see Curtis (2015: 331).

9 Although the musicians use the term maqam [mode], in reality what they describe is a tetrachord because the range of the melody does not surpass a fourth. For more on the use of the term in reference to ʿaiṭa, see Ciucci (2012a).

10 I recorded this text of ‘L-ʿalwa’ at the wedding in question. The verses were transcribed, transliterated and translated together with Abdessadek Boumahchad, and discussed with the Ouled Ben Aguida and a number of Moroccan interlocutors.

11 Honorific title prefixing the name of a patrilineal descendant of the Prophet.

12 Mulay Sidi Bu refers to M'hammed l-Bahloul.

13 The verse refers to the ‘boy of L-ʿalwa’, the epithet for M'hammed l-Bahloul.

14 The name of a tribe and its annexed territory in the Casablanca–Settat region.

15 The name of a tribe and its annexed territory in the Casablanca–Settat region.

16 Audiences and musicians explained to me that this verse is as an example of a what happens when a singer forgets something and quickly substitutes it with something else which has a similar rhyme. However, because the verse continues to be sung by these and other performers, it is possible to infer that, although it is not considered authentic to the song, it is now part of contemporary performances of ‘L-ʿalwa’, particularly because nobody seems to remember the ‘original’ verse.

17 A saint whose shrine is located in the Casablanca–Settat region.

18 This refers to Sidi Mohammed Sherqi, a saint and one of the great Moroccan Sufis. His shrine and zawiya [lodge] are situated in the town of Boujad, located in the Beni Mellal–Khenifra region (see Eickelman 1976).

19 Literally kbida is the liver, because in popular parlance and poetry it is in this organ, rather than in the heart, that sentiments reside.

20 The first prayer of the day.

21 A saint whose shrine is situated in the Berrechid region.

22 A saint whose shrine is situated in a town with the same name in the province of el-Jadida. Sidi Bennour is the birth place of the late lead shikha of the Ouled Ben Aguida, Fatna Bent l-Houcine.

23 In Moroccan Arabic, everyday expressions such as jani l-ḥal [lit. the ecstasy has come to me] or fih l-ḥal [lit. the ecstasy is in him] are used as metaphors to describe the need or desire for sexual relations.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Grant for Dissertation Research 2001 (Morocco); American Institute for Maghrib Studies Grant; Jewish Foundation for the Education of Women Fellowship.