Larbi Batma Nass El Ghiwane And Postcolonial Music In Morocco

Established in 1971, Nass el-Ghiwane is a legendary musical group that transformed the Moroccan music scene in the last decades of the 20th century. The charismatic founding member Larbi Batma (1948-1997) through his lyrics brought to light Moroccan folklore and obscure poetry. His autobiography Al-raḥīl, blurs the boundaries between fact and fiction and deals with social issues plaguing post-independence Morocco. Providing a reading of Al-raḥīl, this book is the first in English to examine the work of Nass el-Ghiwane, as well as the emergence of al-Ūghniya al-Ghīwaniya as a musical genre and the social conditions that fostered its growth.

Established in 1971, Nass el-Ghiwane is a legendary musical group that transformed the Moroccan music scene in the last decades of the 20th century. The charismatic founding member Larbi Batma (1948-1997) through his lyrics brought to light Moroccan folklore and obscure poetry. His autobiography Al-raḥīl, blurs the boundaries between fact and fiction and deals with social issues plaguing post-independence Morocco. Providing a reading of Al-raḥīl, this book is the first in English to examine the work of Nass el-Ghiwane, as well as the emergence of al-Ūghniya al-Ghīwaniya as a musical genre and the social conditions that fostered its growth.

A philosophical exploration of pop music that reveals a rich, self-reflexive art form with unsuspected depths. In the first major philosophical treatise on the subject, Agnès Gayraud explores all the paradoxes of pop—its inauthentic authenticity, its mass production of emotion and personal resonance, its repetitive novelty, its precision engineering of seduction—and calls for pop (in its broadest sense, encompassing all genres of popular recorded music) to be recognized as a modern, technologically mediated art form to rank alongside cinema and photography. In a thoroughgoing engagement with Adorno's fierce critique of "standardized light popular music," Dialectic of Pop tracks the transformations of the pop form and its audience over the course of the twentieth century, from Hillbilly to Beyoncé, from Lead Belly to Drake. Inseparable from the materiality of its technical media, indifferent and intractable to the perspectives of high culture, pop subverts notions of authenticity and inauthenticity, original and copy, aura and commodity, medium and message. Gayraud demonstrates that, far from being the artless and trivial mass-produced pabulum denigrated by Adorno, pop is a rich, self-reflexive artform that recognises its own contradictions, incorporates its own productive negativity, and often flourishes by thinking "against itself." Dialectic of Pop sings the praises of pop as a constitutively impure form resulting from the encounter between industrial production and the human predilection for song, and diagnoses the prospects for twenty-first century pop as it continues to adapt to ever-changing technological mediations.

This book works on the interface between literature, culture, and discourse. It is entirely devoted to the reading of some of Zafzāf’s novels that came out in the early 1970s and in the late 1980s, and attempts to chart the trajectory of the aesthetic imaginary of an exceptional writing experience that marked out the literary and cultural landscape in Morocco and in the Arab world for long. Zafzāf and his writings are associated with aspects of the country's social contradictions, cultural transition, and political transformations, expressed through various aesthetic patterns that translate the crisis of the intellectual within a society weighed down by poverty, political instability, social conflict, and cultural disintegration. Given the relative scarcity of resources that are written in English about the Moroccan novel of Arabic expression, this work is an attempt to theorize and approach in an interdisciplinary manner a set of narratives that have not been previously explored in western academia. Using postcolonial discourse as approach and a metaphor of reading, it draws attention to the often-neglected texts in Moroccan literature of Arabic expression and explores their aesthetic, discursive, and cultural implications that rethink and disturb canonical formations of literary texts in Morocco. This book will be adopted in the now burgeoning fields of the Humanities, and will provide useful resources for courses about Moroccan Literature and culture.

The SAGE Encyclopedia of Music and Culture presents key concepts in the study of music in its cultural context and provides an introduction to the discipline of ethnomusicology, its methods, concerns, and its contributions to knowledge and understanding of the world′s musical cultures, styles, and practices. The diverse voices of contributors to this encyclopedia confirm ethnomusicology′s fundamental ethos of inclusion and respect for diversity. Combined, the multiplicity of topics and approaches are presented in an easy-to-search A-Z format and offer a fresh perspective on the field and the subject of music in culture. Key features include: Approximately 730 signed articles, authored by prominent scholars, are arranged A-to-Z and published in a choice of print or electronic editions Pedagogical elements include Further Readings and Cross References to conclude each article and a Reader’s Guide in the front matter organizing entries by broad topical or thematic areas Back matter includes an annotated Resource Guide to further research (journals, books, and associations), an appendix listing notable archives, libraries, and museums, and a detailed Index The Index, Reader’s Guide themes, and Cross References combine for thorough search-and-browse capabilities in the electronic edition

This comprehensive Routledge Handbook on the Modern Maghrib introduces and analyses the region in its full complexity, focusing on the countries of Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, and Libya, as well as the northern and western Sahara. In addition to country studies that provide historical and geopolitical background, a series of thematic explorations engage with a range of social, linguistic, cultural and economic aspects, providing a rich mosaic of current scholarship on the region. Addressing important debates such as the volatile international relations among constituent states, the role of women in society, and the environmental impact of climate change, the book considers natural resources, music, media and language, and revisits the history of borders and social tribal structures. What emerges is not only a variegated picture of the Maghrib as a complex and rapidly changing region, but one marked by stark contrasts and divergences among its constituent states based on their Ottoman and colonial experiences, their relationships with their Saharan and Mediterranean neighbours, and their own political trajectories. This Handbook fills an important gap in knowledge on a region increasingly significant in European and American affairs, and will appeal to anyone interested in the history, economies and societies of North Africa.

Focus: Music and Religion of Morocco introduces the region and its history, highlighting how the pressures of religious life, post-colonial economic struggle, and global media come together within Moroccan musical life. Musical practices contextualize and clarify global historical and contemporary movements—many of which remain poorly understood—while articulating the daily realities of the region’s populations in ways that rarely show through current news accounts of religious extremism, poverty and inequality, and forced migration. As with other volumes in the series, Focus: Music and Religion of Morocco addresses large, conceptual issues though interwoven case studies, in three parts: Part I – Memories and Medias: Who We Are highlights how issues of religion, colonialism, nationalism, and globalization transcend boundaries through music to create a sense of personal and national identity, whether hundreds of years ago or on today's satellite television stations. Part II – Contesting Mainstreams: Where We're Going explores Morocco’s sacred and secular music practices as they relate to the country's diversity and its contemporary politics. Part III – Focusing In: Faith and Fun in Fez highlights Fez’s sacred music industry by introducing musicians who navigate musical and religious expectations to appeal to both their own devotional ethics and their audiences’ wants. Links to music examples referenced in the text can be accessed on the eResource site www.routledge.com/9781138094581

Recollecting History beyond Borders looks closely at the experience of Moroccan captives, acrobats and dancing women in America throughout various historical periods. It explores the mobility of Moroccans beyond borders and their cultural interactions with the American self and civilization, and offers a broad discussion on the negotiation of the complex dynamics of representation and on the various discursive ramifications of the cultural contacts initiated by ordinary Moroccan travellers. I...