Toudadine - Songs of Lhoucine Amentag, Tagroupit-Style

This tape comes to us courtesy of Peter at the still active, still great มนต์รักเพลงไทย blog. The group is called Toudadine. I gather that the word toudadine is the female plural in Tachelhit for the Barbary sheep (ewes). The male plural for these sheep (rams) is oudaden, which is of course the name of a renowned Soussi group that originated the tagroupit style in the late 1970s/early 1980s. 

We posted about Oudaden and tagroupit here back in 2015. Briefly, tagroupit originated in the 1980s as a sort of return to traditional Soussi rhythms and melodies as well as love songs. It was seen as a "return" in light of the 1970s innovations of the earlier, more eclectic and political tazenzart style that originated with the group Izenzaren. This 1980s return to traditional melodies by Soussi artists reminds me of the rise of new chaabi groups in 1980s Casablanca like Noujoum Bourgogne and Toulati el Farah who were also "returning" to traditional sources and lyrical themes in distinction to the 1970s proliferation of eclectic and political groups like Nass el Ghiwane.

This cassette by Toudadine is in a sort of pop-tagroupit style. It features the typical electric guitar and banjo, but 3 of the 4 tracks also feature a keyboard, and the rhythm sounds like programmed beats throughout. The group is fronted by what sounds like 2 female singers singing in unison, with a group of men as choral responders. The j-card flap reads:

أغاني متنوعة - كلمات وتلحين الحاج الحسين أمنتاك
Various Songs – Lyrics and Composition by Lhaj Lhoucine Amentag

Lhoucine Amentag (not to be confused with Hmad Amentag) was a well-known singer and composer in the rwayes/amarg tradition. My ear thinks that the first song on this Toudadine tape may not be one of Amentag's: it seems to have more of a pop structure than the other 3 songs, and the lyrics keep coming back to the word "Toudadine", so I wonder if it might be an original song of the Toudadine group.

I didn't find any information about the group online. There are several video clips of a Toudadine group uploaded by Production Disco, but they are clearly a different group - the female vocals are in a different register, it seems about 20 years removed from the group in our cassette, and the songs are very poppy, despite the traditional banjo/guitar accompaniment. (The commenters on the video clips of this group are 50% complaints about their clothes and 50% defending them for having nice voices, despite their terrible clothes. E.g., here.)

Google identified one of the songs on this cassette as "Ahbib Nyan Zound Lkhatam", credited to a "Toudadine Amazigh". Perhaps LVEM rebranded the recordings with this name to avoid confusion with the other fashion-challenged Toudadine group 😅.

Speaking of Rais Lhoucine Amentag, you can find a swell cassette of his over at Moroccan Tapes and another one at TRAD & FOLK MUSIC ON 33RPM & TAPES. I used one of the tracks from the Moroccan Tapes cassette in a mix I recently produced for Radio Is A Foreign Country called "Buzz, Rattle & Scratch: Grainy Timbres of Moroccan Music". Check that out HERE - it's a buzzy, rattling, scratchy good time!

Toudadine تودادين
La Voix El Maarif cassette 461 صَوت لامعَارف

FLAC | 320