Les Frères Talbi - Wallah Ma Qaddit

More vintage 1993 music this week, but from the eastern edge of Morocco rather than the west. This is a swell rai cassette from Al Ikhwane Talbi, aka Les Frères Talbi, that is, the Brothers Talbi (literally) or better the Siblings Talbi or the Family Talbi (idiomatically), specifically Abdelkader and Sara. 

1993 was a big time for rai music internationally. Moroccan artists had some national successes in the rai style, especially those from the northwestern cities of Berkane and Oujda. Those cities share regional musical styles similar to those of northwestern Algeria like Sidi Bel Abbès and Oran, the birthplace of rai. The Family Talbi hail from Berkane, and they had a breakout hit with the title track of this album, the catchy "Wallah Ma Qaddit"

According to a 2007 interview with Abdelkader [1], the Talbi family group went to France after their initial Moroccan successes to try their luck there. After some time in France, they returned to Morocco. Rai had declined in popularity at that point, so Abdelkader had the idea to work on new music based on the reggada folkloric style he grew up with in Berkane. He adopted the stage name Talbi One, and appears to have had a successful career as a pop-reggada artist - you can find Talbi One's music on all of the streaming platforms. Here's a 2019 track from him - it's got a great sound, and 19 million views to boot!:

Back to today's cassette: The Discogs entry for the album notes that arrangements were done by one Mustapha Asker, who appears to have worked with many great Algerian rai artists (Hasni, Nasro, Fadela...). However, I don't see Asker's name anywhere on the cassette shell or j-card. Whoever did the arrangements, they are nice. The bass player in me is delighted to hear some actual bass guitar rather than a synth bass here:

Abdelkader & Sara - Al Ikhwane Talbi عبدالقادر و صارة - الاخوان الطلبي
Wallah Ma Qaddit والله ما قديت
Dalaïphone cassette 5 ضالعيفون

A1 Wallah Ma Qaddit والله ما قديت
A2 Leila ليلى
A3 Lbareh Jani البرح جاني 
B1 Sidi Lhouari سيدي الهواري
B2 Toulmonde Iparti تولومند إبارتي
B3 Gouloulou Iwelli قولولو يولى 

FLAC | 320

[1] Interview with Talbi One by Fatima Nouali, Marrakech Express, RTM (Moroccan TV) 2007. https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=3513729372096559

Paco Abderrahmane - T'hayyer A Moul al Hal (new rip, remix, remaster)

Here's new digitization of one of my favorite Gnawa cassettes. I shared a version of this back in 2011. I recently obtained a new copy of the tape and a new cassette deck too, so I thought I'd try to improve the sound compared to the earlier version. 

This is an album by Paco Abderrahmane (of Nass el Ghiwane, as the j-card points out). It features 4 songs from the Gnawa repertoire. See my original post to hear me sing the praises of the instrumentation and ensemble.

A couple of things strike me upon listening to this album again. 

1) Paco's singing. It's completely unrestrained and I love it - he reaches for notes and doesn't always hit them, but I'll take his conviction and energy on every failed attempt over a smooth restrained performance any day of the week. 

2) The swing of the guinbri. The way Paco's guinbri lines sit on the beat FEELS different from what I hear from players of the Marrakech school (Boussou, Baqbou, Sam, Baska, et al. ), but I find a similarity with the feel of Mahmoud Guinia's playing - so maybe it's an Essaouira thing. Like maybe they're playing more on top of the beat where the Marrakech players play a little behind it. I may be completely wrong... 

I may also have been wrong to try to remix this cassette. The tracks on side A were recorded or mastered very hot, and the vocals max out in the refrains - even when I split the stems and tried to work on the vocal sound there was not much I could do for the distorted passages. I tried to give some more definition to the guinbri and the tbel barrel drum, but it was a challenge since they exist in a similar frequency range. (I think that's one reason those instruments are not played together very often.)

Anyway, I'm tired of tweaking and re-tweaking the eq, imaging, and other settings. I'm an amateur engineer, so this has been, shall we say, a "learning opportunity" for me. I'm happy with some of the results, and meh with other parts of it. So what I'll do is share my remix as well as a raw rip of the cassette (which is at least an improvement over my 2011 rip). And the music is still fantastic, whichever version you may prefer. 

Raw cassette rip of track 1 (below) for comparison with remix version (above in YouTube clip), if you're interested in that kind of thing:

Best of luck to your teams of choice in the World Cup, or boycott the whole damn thing if you are so inclined.

Thayyer A Moul Al Hal Mâ  تحير امول الحال مع
Paco Abderrahmane باكو عبد الرحمن
(Nass el Ghiwane ناس لاغيوان )
Edition Sonya Disque cassette ESD 322 سونيا ديسك
1993 + Moroccan Tape Stash Remix 2026

A1 Subaîi السباعي
A2 Lyaburi اليابوري
B1 Damman Lbled ضمان البلاد
B2 Lâtfa Lillah العطفة لله

Raw Rip: FLAC | 320
Remix/Remaster: FLAC | 320

Fatima Tabaamrant - Finally!

 

It's about time we got around to posting about La Tabaamrant! Fatima Tabaamrant (b. 1962) is a powerhouse singer, songwriter, and activist for Amazigh and women's rights. In addition to being a pivotal figure in Soussi music, she served as a representative in the Moroccan parliament from 2011-2016, where she became the first person to ever pose a question in the Amazigh language. 

After a troubled childhood and early marriage, Tabaamrant turned to poetry and music as a mode of expression. (Her early life is dramatized in the 1994 film Tihiya, in which she stars.) She spent time working in the troupes of several different rwais (Rais Jami’ Al-Hamidi, Said Ashtouk, Moulay Mohamed Belfaqih, and Mohamed Demsiri) before ultimately striking out on her own in the early 1990s. She was not the first female artist to lead her own troupe in the field of Soussi amarg poetry and song: Rqiya Demsiriya and Fatima Tihihit were two notable predecessors. Tabaamrant, however, distinguished herself by not only singing and leading her own troupe but also composing her own poetry. 

 

Her work has addressed many themes and issues over the years, primarily connected to and in support of Amazigh identity. These include: marginalization, Amazigh culture, land, language and traditions, women's rights, education and parenting, rural vs urban life, history and religion, love and marriage and contemporary topical issues. (She released a song in 1998 mourning Kabyle singer/songwriter Matoub Lounes, who was assassinated in Algeria that year.)

I picked up this cassette in 2012, I believe in Rabat. (Tabaamrant's YouTube channel dates it to 2000.) I don't speak Tachelhit, so I don't know what these songs are about. The main musical style here is a sort of tagroupit augmented with ahwach sounds. On first listen, I thought it was the typical tagroupit electric guitar plus banjo or bouzouki. On second listen, I think it's actually 2 electric guitars: one plucky twangy one and a second warm/fluid one. Additionally, all tracks feature drum accents and punctuations typical of ahwach performance, and the final track adds flutes and clapping to the mix for a big ahwach finale. For fans of quintuple meter (like me), the title track (Track 2) is 14 and a half minutes of fivey goodness!

Fatima Tabaamrant continues to produce new music consistently, incorporating different musical configurations as times change, but always anchored in her poetry and vocal delivery. Follow her on Instagram and/or Facebook, and subscribe to her YouTube channel, where she dropped this new track AN HOUR AGO:

Fatima Tabaamrant  فاطمة تبعمرانت
Nekkay Igan Anafal نكى أيڭان أنفال
Afraou Cassette 295 افواو كاسيط

 

A1 Tezwit Rzmed Ousafar تزويت رزمد أسفار
A2 Nekkay Igan Anafal نكى أيڭان أنفال
B1 Ikhfnouhan Ikhfinou أيخفنوهان إخفنو
B2 Alalla Noumad Oufigh أللانوماد أفيغ

FLAC | 320

 

SOURCES CONSULTED:

• Femmes du Maroc (FDM).  "Fatima Tabaamrant: 'c’est le public qui donne le ton à mes concerts'". 2022-07-16. https://femmesdumaroc.com/archives/fatima-tabaamrant-cest-le-public-qui-donne-le-ton-a-mes-concerts
• Hawamich. "فاطمة تبعمرانت.. من طفولة قاسية إلى صوت للهوية الأمازيغية [Fatima Tabaamarant.. From a cruel childhood to a voice for Amazigh identity]". 2025-09-22. https://hawamich.info/10504/
• Oudadene, Hassane. "Rwāys and Tirruyssā: A Symbolic Site of Amazigh Identity and Memory." Jadaliyya, Nov 1, 2021. https://www.jadaliyya.com/Details/43446
• Talmenssour, Abdelâali. "Rraysa Fatima Tabaâmrant: Figure emblématique de la chanson amazighe traditionnelle du Sud marocain", Moenia, 20 (2014), 215-230. https://hispadoc.es/servlet/articulo?codigo=7541628