Rouicha - Aouraamache Aouri Ta3fat

Another Rouicha banger for your digital cassette rack. I obtained this tape recently. One of my favorite Rouicha tapes is TCK819 (now reupped in FLAC!), so I wondered whether TCK820, whose j-card features the same photo and yellow color scheme, might come from the same session and might be as jamming or be in a similar vein.

I've been trying to get my mind around the Rouicha discography for a while. He has released so many recordings over the years, the largest chunk being the cassettes on Tichkaphone. Between Discogs, various other online sources, and what I have on hand, I've identified almost 80 individual cassettes released on Tichkaphone, dating I would guess from the early 1980s to the mid-2000s. Like most Moroccan tapes, none of them list a release date or copyright date. One can assume that the catalog number listed on the cassette j-card indicates the sequence in which they were released. That may be so, but it's not clear whether the music contained on those cassettes was newly recorded at the time of release or had been sitting in the can for some time. As I related in my first Rouicha post in 2011, I visited the Comptoir Marocain de Distribution de Disques in Casablanca, which also served at that time as the headquarters of Tichkaphone. This would have been in around 2001. I was told that they had around 30 albums worth of Rouicha recordings that had not yet been released. It would sure be nice to know when the various songs and albums were recorded and released.

One think I noticed while compiling my list of Tichkaphone cassettes is that they appear to be released in groups of 2, sometimes 4 consecutive catalog numbers. In most of these cases, one release would feature songs in the Tamazight language while its companion release would be in Moroccan Arabic darija. Doubling up the production one each release would seem to maximize the appeal to the different linguistic audiences. 

Back to the tape at at hand - it is the Tamazight companion to the Arabic release TCK819. It is excellent, but it does not feel or sound like the same session, despite the consecutive catalog numbers. Where TCK819 has a warm, dynamic sound, this one is thin, sounding almost like an AM radio broadcast compared to an FM broadcast. With the miracle of modern music apps, I was able to warm up and fill out the sound to give the lotar more of the round, low-end sound we know and love, and to give the bendir more of that good boom and buzz. I think it turned out alright and I don't think these songs are online anywhere else. Enjoy!

Rouicha رويشة
Tichkaphone cassette TCK 820 تشكفون

A1 Aouraamache Aouri Ta3fat ْأورَامَشْ أوُري تَعْفَات
A2 Awerd Agankh ْأورْدَاڭَّنْخ
B1 Magharghat Taddout ْمَاغَرْغَاتْ تَدُّوت
B2 Maayatousaawat ْمَايَتْوَصّات

FLAC | 320

Mâalem Mohamed Daoui - Gnawa Variétés From Meknes - Track 2 Destroyed Me

 

Here's a nice old-school Gnawa cassette from Mâalem Mohamed Daoui. During my research days (late 1990s - early 2000s), Daoui was the most well known Gnawa mâalem from Meknes. I believe he was the primary interlocutor for the German researcher Frank Welte, whose Der Gnawa-Kult: Trancespiele, Geisterbeschwörung und Besessenheit in Marokko (1990) was one of the first books on Gnawa ritual and repertoire. 

The cassette contains 3 tracks - the first is a 25-minute non-stop suite of songs from various sections of the Gnawa lila ceremony (black, blue, and red songs). This track crosses sides 1 and 2 of the cassette, but I was able to edit them together relatively seamlessly. 

The track that destroyed me was the second track. I made the mistake of transferring this tape when I was trying to do work for my day job. "Moulay Abdellah Ben Lhoucine" came out of the speakers and within about a minute my hair was down and I was stamping the floor with my bare feet and banging my hands on my desk/workstation. (Good thing I am working remotely these days...) The singing unfolds at its own pace, going on as long as it needs to, to give a listener (trancer) the lines of text that invoke the ambience of wali (saint), while the guinbri marks time, provocatively, underneath, and the choral responders keep the energy high and provacative. On the ritual floor, singing would continue until the mâalem judges that trancers are competently riding the groove and are ready to interact directly with the guinbi. His manipulation of riffs responds to (or provokes) the movements of whatever trancing body is directly in front of him, moving in dialogue or in concert with his guinbri. In this state of heightened musical awareness, trancers are keenly aware of the slightest variations of phrase, accent, and volume level. The job of the mâalem is to give the trancer the musical support to express in movement whatever needs to expressed. This track, better than most Gnawa tracks you will hear, gives a sense of how that conversation unfolds - though of course you are only hearing one side of it.

Daoui الضاوي
Variétés Marocaines Gnaoui منوعات ڭناوية
Sawt Isamailia cassette 015 صوت الإسماعلية

A1-B1 Berkilia - Fofo Denba - Lgnaoui Baba Mimoun - Samaoui - Marhaba Sidi Komwi
B2 Moulay Abdellah Ben Lhoucine - Moulay Brahim
B3 Mekkaoui Habib Allah - Âmmar Douwaya Abdellah

FLAC | 320 

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