Studio Ahwach: Othmane Azoulid - Ahouache N'tfrkhine

It's been a minute since we posted any ahwach - the communal song and dance performance tradition from Tachelhit-speaking regions of Morocco. Ahwach can take on very different forms from place to place or from occasion to occasion. Today's cassette presents an ahwach recording by artists from Tafraoute, led by the singer Othmane Azoulid. We actually posted a tape (now re-upped in FLAC) featuring Azoulid back in 2013. That tape featured an all-male ensemble. Today's tape is an ahwach n'tferkhine - a type of ahwach that features a seated male drum group accompanying a group of female singers. (The work tfrkhine means "young girls" in Tachelhit.) There are quite a few videos on YouTube of ahwach n'tferkine. In some varieties, women's heads are adorned by ornate headdresses. In others, their heads are completely covered by individual white sheets. And in others, as pictured on this cassette's j-card, the women stand shoulder to shoulder in a line and a single long cloth covers all of their heads.

This cassette contains a studio recording of ahwach songs, and the audio quality is very good. Particularly nice is the stereo separation between the different bendir frame drums, which take turns providing rhythmic punctuations. (Actually, on second listen, I think this is just a single bendir, just being panned left, right, or center in the mix to liven up the mix.) And the âwad flutes coming in at the end of some tracks are the icing on top of a lovely cake of naqqus, clapping, bendirs, and zgharits (ululations). 

Ahouache N'tfrkhine أحواش نتفرخين
B'riasat Lfnane Azoulid برئاسة: الفنان أزوليض
[Directed by The Artist Azoulid] (Othmane Azolid)
Box Music cassette 
2011

A1 Ahan Aya Zoulid Nsherek Tamount أهان أيا زوليض نشرك تامونت
A2 Abou Lhawa أبو الهوى
B1 Atbir Rzmed Irriche أتبير رزمد الريش
B2 Ayih Ayan Iaazan Darnaghi أييه أيان إعزان دارنغي

FLAC | 320

Ta'ifa al Hamdouchia - Qubbat Sidi Ali ben Hamdouch

The stash abides! YOU WANT THIS TAPE. You should start downloading it now, then come back and read the blogpost.

OK? Let's continue...

This is a tape of Hamadsha songs, apparently from the mid '90s. According to the pixelated Arabic transcription on my homemade j-card (printed from my first computer using my first Arabic word processing program), this cassette was on the Fassiphone label, credited to a group called Ta'ifa al Hamdouchia - Qubbat Sidi Ali ben Hamdouch. I wonder if the group includes Moqaddem Abderrahim Amrani, whose late-90s album on the same label remains one of the stash's most popular offerings.

This is a fantastic album. A short invocation and a shorter coda bookend two looooong tracks of Hamadcha songs. The opening invocation track is just weird - creepy new-agey synthesizer and what could be a guinbri but is hard to distinguish beneath the dripping layers of overdone ambience.

But it's over quickly, and you plunge straight into the organic heaviness of buzzy harraz clay goblet drums driving 10/8 rhythms under blaring ghaita oboes, group male vocals, and the celebratory zgharit ululations of the attendant womenfolk. This is unrushed, unrelenting, insistent stuff. You know it's building toward something frenzied, but it takes it's sweet time. By the end of side 1, you get a sense of where it's going.

Side 2, however, does not continue this progression. In performance, Side 2's long suite of songs would probably precede Side 1's suite: The ghaitas are absent, the songs feature passages of solo singing in addition to the group vocals, the lyrics seem directed to the Hamadcha's eponym (Sidi Ali ben Hamdouch) and the final song of Side 2 is the opening song of side 1. I thought about reversing the running order of the tracks, but I'm kind of digging the way Side 2's songs follow the Side 1's songs. After 20 minutes of ghaitas blaring, their absence leaves sonic space for the vocals to become starkly prominent and memorable. And the opening invocation and closing "coda" of ghaitas seem deliberately placed. So I left the running order as-is, while naming the 2 long tracks "Part 1" and "Part A" to honor the ambiguity.

I had no recollection of having a copy of this. I found it while looking for some good Gnawa music to offer up before Chaabane turns into Ramadan. It was tucked away on the flip side of a Gnawa tape I dubbed years ago. Hope you enjoy it!

Ta'ifa al Hamdouchia - Qubbat Sidi Ali ben Hamdouch (Fassiphone cassette)

1) intro	1:10
2) Hmadcha (pt. 1)	19:55
3) Hmadcha (pt. A)	19:57
4) coda	0:56

Get it here.

Najat Aâtabou - Lillah Ya S'haba (1986)

Here's one more old Najat Aâtabou tape for ya. This is the last one I own with her old line-up of oud and bendir-s. I wish I knew the name of the left-handed oud player who appears in the early Najat video clips I see online. I assume he's the same one who plays on these early-mid 1980's albums of hers. He always sounds great. Can anyone identify him?

I don't have a j-card for this tape, but the cassette shell is from Edition Hassania. "Ditih" and "Wardat Lejnane" appear on the out-of-print CD "The Voice of the Atlas", whose notes indicate that the songs date from 1986 or 1987. The song "Lillah ya S'haba" also appears on Najat's orchestral album, but I prefer this stripped-down version, which builds and builds 'til it bursts out into a joyous ululation-filled climax.

The version in this video is similar. Not quite as raucous as on the album. But it does feature a boat onstage, (at around 9:45 and forward) which is pretty awesome:



Side 2 of my tape is of sub-par audio quality, but Najat shines through nonetheless.

Najat Aâtabou - Lillah Ya S'haba (1986)
1) Lillah Ya S'haba
2) Ditih
3) Ana Mzawga Fik A Hnaya
4) Wardate Lejnane

Get it here.

PS - I've been working on a Lemchaheb post, but got caught up in a forest of metaphors, from which I'm still trying to extricate myself. Soon, incha'Llah.

Bnate Errma - Women's drum (machine) circle and party singing

OK, this is one of the more obnoxious cassettes in my stash. You may love it, hate it, or both! Abdenbi (Llah irhamuh) used to flee the room if this came on the tape player back in '92. Not only does it feature the sort of songs that the ladies sing when they get together and sit around drumming and hanging out (and talking crap about the men). But it replaces the cool stratified drumming of Moroccan women's percussion ensembles with a drum machine. Doubly annoying!

Or doubly awesome! You get rocking, spirited, call-response singing, typical themes of unrequited love (track 2), exile (track 3), betrayal (track 6) and trance (track 7), a live derbuka plus electro-drum fills, plenty of zgharit-s (ululations), a guy who adds rhythmic vocal inserts here and there and sounds like a cow (track 6, 1:05), and the epic White Album intro to track 3 ("Airplane, bring me back to my homeland").

Totally saturated sound increases the annoyance/awesomeness factor. Enjoy and/or use it to empty the room of humans.

BTW1 - No idea if the woman pictured on the j-card is part of the ensemble. If I had to guess, I would say probably not.

BTW2 - The group's name Bnate Errma (girls of the rma) suggests some association with the fantastic rural (male) genre 'abidat errma, but I don't know enough about 'abidat errma to know if this group is pulling any special influence from that source.

Get it here.