50 TRANS IT ION ISSUE 93

Elias Muhanna

Conversation

Omar Sayyed

In the back room of a dusky Casablancacafé, three men are trying to teach me alesson. Our dialogue is muffled by thesounds of the city on a freezing Febru-ary afternoon: rain, traffic, and the steadyboom of ten-foot swells pounding therock pools below the nearby pier. Insidethe café, surly regulars bark at each otherover all manner of beverages: pastis andcognac; green-tinted bottles of Cigale,the local beer; syrupy mint tea, the“Berber whisky.”

The three men surround me, theirvoices garbled and slurry with drink.The leader—a soft-spoken giant namedOmar Sayyed—reaches out to clamp ahuge hand over my mouth.

“Shut up and listen. I will explain itone last time,” he says quietly.

“Listen to me!” shrieks a young ge-neticist, elbowing the big man aside.“Listen, and repeat after me.” The wirydoctor clears his throat, straightens hiscollar, and licks his lips.

“Illa,” he says.“Illa,” I dutifully repeat.

“Illi.” He pronounces the word withexquisite slowness, flicking his tongueagainst the second syllable, pressing itinto relief.

I hesitate for a moment, goingthrough the motions. “Il-li?”

The doctor’s eyes are glowing as heleans back and casts a triumphant look athis comrades.

“So what?” I ask abruptly.The table erupts with flailing gestures

and rapid-fire cursing in Arabic. Thedoctor stands and shoves his drink asidein disgust. Omar lumbers out of hischair, aping his friend’s pronunciationlesson. The third man at the table, atoothless old sailor, swipes the doctor’sdiscarded glass and empties it in a singleswallow. I laugh aloud and roll up mysleeves.

Omar finally regains the floor.“Don’tbe ashamed,” he offers. “The differenceis very subtle. Listen again.”

He pauses and surveys the drunkencrowd menacingly,daring anyone to dis-rupt his performance.

FOLK THE KASBAHA conversation with Omar Sayyed, leader of Nass el Ghiwane

FOLK THE KASBAH 51

“Ma hmouni gheir ar-rijal illa da’ou.”The words, nearly whispered, fill the si-lence. Around the café, patrons are lis-tening in, grinning.

“Which means,” he says,“I worry formen when they disappear,when they arelost to us.”

He waits for my cue, and says:“As op-posed to:Ma hmouni gheir ar-rijal . . . il-li . . . da’ou,” lingering before and afterthe penultimate word, and suddenly Ihear it.

“Which means,” I blurt, flushed withdiscovery, “I worry for those men whodisappeared. Right?” I am desperate toqualify: “Those men, the ones that youknew? The ones you can name,who dis-appeared, who were imprisoned—right?”

Drinks are ordered; a busboy cheers.Omar eyes me appraisingly as his

friends cackle and thump my back. Mytranslation lesson is complete. In a differ-ent country, even a different Arab coun-try, this conversation would have been

inscrutable. But we are in Morocco, andeveryone knows exactly what we aretalking about.The waiters and assembledcafé dwellers share a chuckle at my ex-pense, while cabbies and grocers and ac-countants come over to greet myteacher, Omar Sayyed. He knows almostnone of them,but they all know him.Heis a singer, a celebrity, perhaps the mostfamous voice in Morocco. He is fifty-sixyears old.And he has just explained somesong lyrics to me with the help of a ge-netic engineer and a drunken sailor.<PQ1>

• • •

Moroccans are intensely proud of Nassel Ghiwane, the group Omar Sayyed andfour friends founded thirty-odd yearsago in Casablanca. People like to callthem the Beatles of Morocco—and alsothe Rolling Stones of Morocco, the BobDylans, and even the Grateful Dead.Theprofusion of titles is confusing but apt: inthe 1970s, the members of Nass el Ghi-

Left to right: ‘Allal

Yalla, Omar

Sayyed, La’arbi

Batma, Abdelaziz

al-Tahiri, Boujmii’

52 TRANS IT ION I SSUE 94

wane (pronounced “ghee-WAN”) wereindeed Western-style stars. They playedbefore thousands of fans at packed are-nas, in country and abroad, and releaseddozens of recordings.Their songs playedon every radio station, their logos em-blazoned on T-shirts, bumper stickers,and window decals.They grew their hairlong, smoked dope, and wore whiteleather vests with mohair bell-bottoms.To most Moroccans, they looked like therevolution.

As it happens, Nass el Ghiwane don’tsound anything like the Beatles. Theirmusic doesn’t rock—it jangles, rumbles,and spins. It has a coarse, vaguely ruralquality.When I first heard them, the im-age that came to mind was that of acrowded barnyard: a scene of squawkinghens, lowing beasts of burden, a bonysheepdog trailing a passel of tin. Themelodies are simple and soulful; thevoices soar and dip in unison chants.Butit is in the rhythm that you hear their in-credible dexterity.When the drums joinin after a banjo solo, the effect can betransformative, like a natural runner hit-ting his stride. The beat sways and shiftsagainst the melody, drawing near andpulling away again, as though the tunewere trapped inside a whirling,weightedcentrifuge.

Nass el Ghiwane debuted in 1971,when Omar Sayyed was twenty-fouryears old. All five members sang, oftenin chorus, and the group played a mot-ley assortment of traditional instrumentsin untraditional combinations: the sentir,a gut-stringed bass lute; banjo; kettle-drums, frame drums, tambourines, andcymbals. The plaintive melodies andchants brought to mind ‘aita, a popularstyle associated with the shikhat—inde-

pendent women of sometimes ill re-pute—but also melhoun, a medieval Mo-roccan oral tradition with roots in thecourtly arts of Moorish Spain. Thegroup’s hypnotic rhythms borrowedfrom the mystagogic cadences of the Sufibrotherhoods, especially the Gnawa—descendents of West African slaves,whose ritual exorcisms entailed whatmight be the original trance music. Thebanjo—a grittier African alternative tothe Arab zither—reinforced the sensethat this music, which was unlike any-thing ever heard in Morocco, was in itsown reckless way a summation of every-thing ever heard in Morocco. It was a

Clockwise from

top: Omar Sayyed,

La’arbi Batma,

Boujmii’, Abdelaziz

al-Tahiri. Center:

Mahmoud al-Sa’di

FOLK THE KASBAH 53

self-consciously nationalist sound, new-fangled and old-fashioned at the sametime.

Out of this ferment, the members ofNass el Ghiwane emerged as custodiansof Morocco’s cultural heritage, curatorsof its traveling show. Their songs werefull of references to old poems,proverbs,medieval saints, and mystics.The fact thatthey sang in colloquial Moroccan ratherthan Egyptian Arabic affirmed this tip-of-the-tongue familiarity:

It’s hard to be at peace, but the love of drinkis easy,

Desire never forgets youIt’s hard to be calm, but the passions of

people are easy . . .So difficult when the desire arises, when the

ambergris is put before me,And the mint and wormwood . . .

This, from Nass el Ghiwane’s most fa-mous song, is stirring social commentarydisguised as a conversation between aman and his tea tray (“Essiniya” [The teatray]). <PQ2> The words invoke familyor friends, gathered around a platter of

steaming cups, a pot of tea, and the sprigsof mint, and wormwood, and ambergris,that are used as infusions. In the open-ing verse, the narrator asks the tray:“Where are those people of good inten-tion once gathered around you? Whereare those blessed and principled people,those who once accompanied you?”Evocative, poetical, and vague, the songpractically begs to be interpreted.Whowere those “principled people,” anyway,and where did they go? Morocco was anerratically authoritarian country in the1970s, a decade marked by coup at-tempts and assassinations, political kid-nappings and censorship. Thousands of“dissidents”—students, intellectuals, reli-gious fundamentalists, leftists—wereperemptorily jailed, silenced, or worse.Although the band steadfastly refused toexplain itself, it isn’t difficult to under-stand why young,urban Moroccan audi-ences were thrilled and scandalized byNass el Ghiwane’s preoccupation withlost time, disintegrating landscapes, andmissing people.

At the group’s inaugural concert inCasablanca, thunderous applause sum-

Gnawa musicians

54 TRANS IT ION I SSUE 94

moned them back on stage for an en-core. After the headlining act was can-celed by popular demand, Nass el Ghi-wane played an impromptu second set,and a star was born. As Tayyeb Seddiki,Morocco’s leading playwright,observed,“In the 1960’s, Moroccans were sick ofthe Egyptian song. Totally fed up. Themusicians were old men in burnoosesdroning on about their lost loves.Youngpeople weren’t so attracted to that—shall we say—’classical’ aesthetic. Thenalong came a group of young guys withlong hair, singing short songs, in a dialectthat we could understand,with a few po-litical denunciations, and . . . voilà! It wasa smash hit.”

Their popularity was boundless. In thenext few years, Nass el Ghiwane playedall over Morocco, as well as Europe,spawning hundreds of imitators andheralding the rebirth of Moroccan pop-ular music. In 1973, the group released itsdebut album, Essiniya, featuring many oftheir most potently allusive songs: “Fineghadi biya khouya” [Where are you tak-ing me, brother?], “Ya bani insan” [Oh,human],“Al madi fat” [The past is gone],and the beloved title track. They calledtheir style “chaabi,” folk music, and thechaabi revival became the dominantsound of the 1970s.Nass el Ghiwane waslargely responsible for the emergence ofthe Moroccan music industry, to saynothing of Moroccan music piracy.

In 1974, tragedy struck the group forthe first time with the death of HgourBoujmii’. The whole country mournedhis death.The group’s next album was ti-tled Hommage à’ Boujmii’; “Ya sah” [Oh,my friend], one of its more powerfulnumbers, appeared years later on thesoundtrack to Martin Scorsese’s The Last

Temptation of Christ. Boujmii’s soaringvoice was a crucial part of Nass el Ghi-wane’s sound, soaring above the group’sunison chants. “My voice was high,” re-calls Omar Sayyed. “It rose to the ear.But Boujmii’s was higher: it cut straightto the heart.”

Still, Nass el Ghiwane has gone on torelease countless records. As best I cantell, I mean that literally—Omar Sayyed,for one, has no idea how many officialreleases the group was party to, and that’snot even counting the bootlegs, whichyou can buy on nearly any street cornerin Marrakech.Some of their most recentrecordings are a kind of homage to blackMorocco; Chants Gnawa du Maroq andTranse musique du Maroq feature faithfulyet spirited interpretations of that five-hundred-year-old black tradition.

Of course, the group has had its crit-ics.While other artists pursued Nass elGhiwane’s polemically hybrid sound—

Jil Jilala and Lem Chaheb are the mostfamous—the chaabi style has been over-shadowed by other musics, including theGnawa music that has become ubiqui-tous at world-music festivals. There arealso Western imports like rock, soul, andespecially hip-hop—not to mention raï,the Algerian-bred sound that has be-come a sort of Pan-Arab house music.Lyrically, too, the group’s studied allu-siveness has come to seem more obtuse

FOLK THE KASBAH 55

Omar Sayyed is a singer, a celebrity, perhaps

the most famous voice in Morocco. He

has just explained some song lyrics to me

with the help of a genetic engineer and a

drunken sailor.

than enticing. By the late 1970s, even,Moroccan critics were complaining that“the troubles of our time—while at thecenter of the group’s message—are notrealistically expressed, and not adequatelygiven shape: they are consumed by the‘old-speak’and the entrancing rhythms.”

It seemed that Nass el Ghiwane spokeeloquently to a particular moment intime, and that time has passed. Still, as Idiscovered in Casablanca, the group’s fanbase is in no way limited to aging hip-sters.Preteen surfers in Essaouria listen totheir music, while graduate studentscompose semiotic analyses of their lyrics.Even Mohammed VI, the young king ofMorocco, is said to be a fan—though hisenthusiasm does not match that of his fa-ther, Hassan II, who used to book thegroup for state dinners.The group mem-bers are beyond famous: they’re family.

In 2001, Morocco observed Nass elGhiwane’s thirtieth birthday with con-certs, television specials, and an extraor-dinary twenty-five-part series in Ittihadal-Ishtiraki, one of the country’s biggestnewspapers. Some articles celebrated thegroup’s history with misty-eyed reminis-cences about the boys from Casablanca(profiles, family portraits, interviews);others reaffirmed Nass el Ghiwane’s con-tinuing importance to Moroccan society.The group still performs, though onlytwo founding members remain—Omarand Allal Yalla, the grizzled banjo player.They are also beginning to cross over

into the English-speaking world. JohnPeel, the preeminent radio personality inthe Commonwealth, recently played thegroup on his show. Their music is eru-dite and ethnic, alien and enthralling. In-deed, it’s easy to imagine the same audi-ences that have come to love the quirkylate-sixties art-pop of Brazil’s Tropicaliamaking space in their hearts for seventiesMuslim folk-pop modernists like Nass elGhiwane.

ELIAS MUHANNA: What has theband been up to these days? Have youbeen traveling?OMAR SAYYED: Not really.We maybe doing a show next week in Tunis, butwe’ve mainly been playing around here.EM:When was the last time you playeda big show in Morocco?OS: We don’t usually get to play bigshows, these days. But we did one a littlewhile ago at Yacoub el Mansour—Ithink the attendance was around 80,000.It was sponsored by Ittihad al Ishtiraki.EM: That’s one of the socialist newspa-pers. Do you support the socialists?OS: Absolutely not. I don’t believe inpolitical parties. Make sure you get thatstraight: I’ve never belonged to any po-litical party.EM:Does Nass el Ghiwane still performin Europe at all?OS: Sure. The last big show we playedwas the “Jour de la Musique” festival inParis, in front of the Eiffel Tower. It washuge: the Trocadero was totally packed.The newspapers said the crowd was400,000 people. But you know, it’s noteasy to play in Europe. We’re alwaysforced to explain that we’re not somekind of traditional Moroccan group.People assume that we must be an An-

56 TRANS IT ION I SSUE 94

Nass el Ghiwane’s most famous song,

“Essiniya,” is a stirring social commentary

disguised as a conversation between a

man and his tea tray.

dalusian orchestra or a Gnawa troupe . .. something folkloric and traditional.

These days, when we play in France,we get people at our shows who are sec-ond-generation French citizens—chil-dren of Moroccan immigrants—andthey are completely assimilated intoFrench society. The only thing they’vehung onto from North Africa is raï—andit’s a bastardized form of raï, in any case.They don’t care about the lyrics; theydon’t know anything about the poetry.The last time we were in France, a pro-moter actually said to us, “Maybe weshould advertise you as a group that playsKoranic instruments.”

EM: Like the banjo!OS: Just because we’re not using synthe-sizers,drum machines, samplers,or what-ever, suddenly we’re playing “Koranic in-struments”! <PQ3> He said that if wewanted to attract big crowds, we’d haveto completely change our look,our mu-sic, everything.What can I say?EM: I didn’t realize that it was that bad.OS: I think it annoys me more than any-one else in the group, but I am horrifiedthat anyone would consider us a tradi-tional ensemble, which, in Morocco, isthe kind of group that’s hired to playweddings or—if you’re lucky, becausethe money is better—to entertain Gnawa ceremony

FOLK THE KASBAH 57

tourists. That, to me, is not art. It’s en-tertainment that sounds ethnic enoughfor tourists, or for the younger genera-tion that’s listening to bad raï.EM: Was it really all that different foryour generation?OS: Completely. I’m a child of the1940s. I grew up in Hay al Mohamedi, aworking-class district of Casablanca.There was a real sense of hope and en-thusiasm in my generation. Our parentswere nationalists.We were the childrenof independence; everything was ripe.You got the sense that anything couldhappen.EM:And this sentiment was particularlystrong in Casablanca, I imagine.OS: In Casa, yes, because the city repre-sented le nouveau Maroc. Casa was the in-dustrial center of the country, and it waspopulated by Moroccans from all aroundthe kingdom. Rich, poor, Berber, Arab,as well as European.EM: When you say that your parents

were nationalists, what do you mean ex-actly? Was it possible to be anything butnationalistic right after independence?OS: No, you’re right. But there weremany political groups in those years, andthe general movement of the Istiqlal [In-dependence Party] began to split intoseparate tributaries quite quickly. Therewere Pan-Arabists, there were socialists,there were many who remained loyal tothe king. No matter what your politicswere, it was impossible not to feel sweptup in the excitement of independence.Plus, the world was changing so quickly;we were not impervious to what washappening in Europe and America. Onthe contrary, we were very much influ-enced by it.EM:You mean musically or socially?OS: Both, obviously. The hippie revolu-tion arrived in Morocco by way ofCasablanca.We were listening to Westernmusic, the Beatles, Jimi, the Stones.Young men were leaving their families inthe country to come and work inCasablanca,which probably felt, to them,like a different planet.EM: What kinds of things made thebiggest impression on you at the time?OS: Actually, I was most impressed—orobsessed, you could say—with the the-ater! We had the Théâtre Municipal inCasablanca, a great theater with a famousdirector, Tayyeb Seddiki. It was a placewhere ordinary people could go and losethemselves in the novelty and fantasy ofit all.EM:When was this exactly?OS:This was the mid-1960s.We used tohang out at the theater and watch theplays. There are many kinds of perfor-mance in Morocco, stretching back overthe centuries, but we were interested in

Album TK, Year TK

© Polydor

58 TRANS IT ION I SSUE 94

bsat, which Tayyeb was exploring. Bsattheater is closest to what you know astheater in the West. It uses a stage, ofsorts, and it has scenery and costumes.And stock characters—many of thesestories were familiar to us. But to seethem brought onto a European-stylestage was . . . well, it was startling to us atthe time. Tayyeb would turn proverbsinto real, full-scale productions, withelaborate scenery and scores of actorsand sometimes musical numbers. Wewere quite in awe of him and his en-tourage, which included some of themost famous actors and writers of theArab world, at the time.EM:When you say “we,” you mean theband?OS: Everyone from Nass el Ghiwanewas there, though we weren’t yet agroup. We came separately, over thecourse of a few months, and after seeinghis productions, we all wanted to be-come actors.EM: Not musicians?OS: No, we had our hearts set on actingat first. It was inevitable, because Tayyebwas an irresistible force. He treated thetheater like a sacred place; onstage, therewasn’t a single person out of place.Everyone had a little ritual to perform.When you finished your part, you’d sitquietly and remain in character, waitingfor the rest of the play to end.And whenyou came back the next day, you’d findthe props and costumes back in theirproper places. I tell you, we weren’t usedto that kind of discipline and attention.And people remained in character.Tayyeb didn’t tell you how to play yourpart, he told you how to find your part.Even now,when you watch Al Harraz—the filmed version, in black and white—

you’d be amazed at what he producedwith kids who’d never been on a properstage. Everything moved, even thescenery! One of the other great writersand actors of the time, Ahmed TayyebLaalaj, said of us: “The beasts are beingtrained.”

Funeral of TK,

19TK

FOLK THE KASBAH 59

EM: So, was this the first true Moroccantheater?OS:Well, not exactly, because we havealways had a theatrical tradition in thehalqas.EM: I’ve seen those in the Jemma’ alFna’, the huge central square in Mar-rakech. They are basically street theater,right?OS: The halqa is a combination of the-ater, poetry, storytelling, music, anddance.We spent an enormous amount oftime at them as kids.EM: I think I’ve only really seen them intourist traps. What were the real oneslike?

OS: Quite simple. A man would get upin front of a circle of spectators and tella story—a long story, embellished withbeautiful details. At various points, hewould stop and sing, and then someoneelse would accompany him with a tam-bourine or a drum.You would hear mu-sic and stories from all around Morocco.As a kid, crouching in that circle, you’dfeel the hairs rise on the back of yourneck as the performers created a worldin front of you.So,you could say that thehalqa was the first true form of Moroc-can theater.EM: Did the other guys from Ghiwanealso go? And did you all know eachother at that time?OS: Absolutely, we used to go together.I knew Allal,Boujmii’, and La’arbi at thattime; we met Paco and Abadelaziz lateron. But the four of us all grew up onMoulay Sherif Street in Hay al Mo-hammedi.We’ve known each other forover fifty years.EM: Had any of you had any musicaltraining?OS: Allal did: he could read music, andhe was an excellent banjo player, even atthat young age.The rest of us didn’t havea formal music education.We didn’t havemuch of a cultural or academic back-ground,period.But, this is what I’m try-ing to say: the halqa was our school, ourmusical, social, and spiritual education.<PQ4> Without it, I don’t think thatthere would have ever been a Nass elGhiwane.EM: So, when did the inspiration for amusical group develop?OS: It all started in the Café Théâtre,which was a little café that Tayyeb Sed-diki started up beside the MunicipalTheater. It had a little stage, and anybodycould get up and perform in front of the

60 TRANS IT ION I SSUE 94

regulars.Actors did monologues and lit-tle skits;musicians came and played.Thecafé was filled with journalists and stu-dents and writers who would spend thewhole day arguing and drinking coffeeand smoking.EM: Sounds a bit like a modern halqa.OS: Actually, yes, except anyone couldget up and play. Tayyeb himself was do-ing very halqa-esque skits, one-manshows, poetry readings, storytelling, andhe roped us into adding some music intothe mix to make some of the storiesmore vivid.We’d never had a place likethat in Morocco—that was the kind ofthing you’d find in Paris. But Tayyebbrought it here. He realized that weneeded something like that, so peoplecould come together and debate art ormusic or anything they liked.So anyway,that’s where we first started playing as agroup, writing our own songs.EM: One of my favorite things to do inCasablanca is to strike up conversationswith people in cafés, and ask them whatyour shows were like in the 1970s. I haveyet to speak to somebody between fortyand fifty years old who had never beento one.The look they get in their eyes—when they describe that time—is price-less.OS: The shows were really special, par-ticularly the more intimate ones,becauseyou felt like you were in the presence ofa family. Everybody knew every word,the music tied us all together.EM: People often talk about the diffi-culties of interpreting—let alone trans-lating—your songs.OS:You know,our parents spoke in a di-alect, a vernacular that was very poetic. Itwas creative and complicated, and theyhad learned it from their parents. That

language is almost seductive in its de-scriptiveness, and it is full of proverbs,which are passed from generation togeneration.

Anyway, this is the language we singin, and if it sounds different to you thanthe ordinary dialect you hear on thestreet, that’s because it is older. Al-Mel-lih, one of Morocco’s greatest writers,once said that he loved Nass el Ghiwane

because the language we used had ascent, a perfume. I think he meant thatthis language has the scent of an earliertime, before independence, before colo-nialism,when our great-great-grandpar-ents were young. Most of our songs arewritten in that language, and we incor-porated a lot of the images from the oldproverbs.Our name,even.We found it ina melhoun:“I asked the jasmine about you/ I asked the rose / I asked the friends ofGhiwane about you.”

Of course, we took proverbs from allover the country, not just the most fa-mous ones—not just Abderrahman alMajdub. And we drew heavily from thepoetry of the Amazighen, the Berbers.The creativity of the Amazighen is in-credible; you don’t find it anywhere else.They have a very expressive language.You know, every rooster in the world isa Berber.EM: Excuse me?

FOLK THE KASBAH 61

It’s not easy to play in Europe. We’re always

forced to explain that we’re not some kind of

traditional Moroccan group. Just because

we’re not using synthesizers, drum

machines, samplers, or whatever, suddenly

we’re playing “Koranic instruments”!

OS: When the rooster crows in themorning, he sings five notes. [Omardemonstrates.] The notes are identical tothe ones in the pentatonic scale that allof Berber music is built on. No matterwhere the rooster is, in Russia, in Bolivia,in China, he sings five notes. That’s be-cause the rooster is Berber. <PQ5>EM: I’ll keep that in mind. Do you havea song about that?OS: [Laughing.] No, but it isn’t a bad

idea. Anyway, when we got up on stage,people were initially surprised to hearthat the words we sang were from a dif-ferent generation. But at the same time,they didn’t sound archaic, like the tradi-tional music we’d heard growing up.Ourmusic was fresh, but because we com-bined it with the dialect and intonationof our parents, the result was somethingthat many Moroccans—especiallyyoung people in the city—found famil-iar.EM: I’ve heard there’s an interestingstory of borrowing behind your most fa-mous song, “Essinya.”OS: Well, there was a man named BaSalem who used to sit and sing in thestreet, begging for alms. He had been allaround Casablanca, singing a particularsong—something about a tea tray. Peo-ple tossed him a few coins, but nobodyreally paid any attention to what he wassaying, except for one man.This one guylived in Hay al Mohammedi; he was sit-ting in his room and he heard the beggar

singing, and the song kept going roundand round in his head. So he got up andwent outside to listen.And that one manhappened to be my friend La’arbi Batma,who was one of the original five mem-bers of Nass el Ghiwane.

He listened to what the beggar wassinging:

I’ve gone and left all behindMy family and loved ones didn’t want me

to goBut I didn’t fall into this ocean by chance ...

That’s what the beggar was singing.SoLa’arbi took it, added some other versesand brought it to Boujmii’, our mainsinger, and Boujmii’transformed it com-pletely. Boujmii’ sang:

Oh regret, regret!What is wrong with my glass of tea, sad

among all the happy glasses?What is the matter with my own glass, lost

in thought, lost, extending its sadness tome?

And that was the beginning of ourmost famous song.EM:Almost from the beginning, peoplehave been finding political messages inyour work.Was that ever your intention?OS: In the context of all the fear andparanoia at the time, it’s inevitable thatone might see a political agenda in ourlyrics. But we never tried to write polit-ical songs. They were songs of protest,sure, but they were more than merelypolitical.EM:What kind of protest was it, then, ifit wasn’t political?OS: Look, we were street kids from thepoorest part of Casablanca, and we sang

62 TRANS IT ION I SSUE 94

The halqa is a combination of theater, poetry,

storytelling, music, and dance. It was

our school, our musical, social, and spiritual

education.

from that perspective. It’s not an elevatedperspective, you see. It’s not a perspectivefrom which somebody can criticize thepeople who have power, in order to takeit for himself. Because the man of thestreet, the beggar, doesn’t have any hopeof getting power, so he can be honest

about what he truly feels. And what hetruly feels, or what we truly felt, didn’thave to do with politics. I don’t think wewere smart enough to criticize even ifwe had wanted to be political. Take thesongs “Fine ghadi biya khouya” [Whereare you taking me, brother?] or “El madi

Omar Sayyed

fatt” [The past is gone]. These weresongs about the uncertainty and anxietywe felt in that moment, because every-thing around us was changing so rapidly.The world of our parents was slippingaway, and we were heading to . . . whoknows where?EM: I’m sorry to harp on this, but Mo-roccans love to talk about the politics ofthe group. Maybe you didn’t put it theredeliberately, but many seemed to feel it.It’s widely believed that “El debbana fi-l btana” [The flea in the sheep’s hide] isyour most political song. A journalist inRabat once told me that you used tolook up at the portrait of the king overthe stage in the concert halls whilesinging the chorus: “We are living thelives of fleas in a sheep’s hide.”OS: That’s complete nonsense. Manypeople tried to find a political agenda inthat song, but they were totally missingthe point, which is unfortunate, becausewe were—in all honesty—trying to saysomething much more important. Theythought we were saying that the flea wassick of living in the sheep’s hide, that itwanted something else.EM: That’s what I gathered, yes.OS: But that wasn’t it.After all, a sheep’shide is the natural home for a flea, right?That’s where it is supposed to live. How-ever, that is where it is supposed to livewhen the sheep is alive, not dead. Wewere trying to say that this hide that theflea is living in was once a sheep. Thehide remains,but the living thing is gone.We—Moroccans, our generation—were living within the remains of some-thing that no longer exists.EM: In other words . . .OS: In other words, the world of ourgrandparents was disappearing—or had

disappeared already—and as much as wethought that we were on our way tosomething better,we had also lost some-thing enormous.EM: So the song marked this middleground? Between the old Morocco andthe new one?OS:Yes,maybe. It was a reminder to lookaround and notice that the husk was stillthere. But, as you say, many people mis-understood.EM: Did these misreadings disturb you?OS:You know, despite what you say, Idon’t think the average listener thoughtof us as a political group. The problemthat we had was with the intellectualsand the critics; they’re the ones whowanted us to talk about the deepermeaning of our songs.And it’s been likethis for the last thirty years. I’ve tried toignore it as much as I can,because I don’thave a political agenda, so I don’t havemuch to say to them.They never wantedto talk about form, about the music it-self: why do you sing it this way, why doyou play it that way? They weren’t in-terested.EM: Has the group ever gotten into anytrouble with the authorities?OS: No, not really. Actually, the onlytime we were ever questioned was aboutour song “Ma hmouni” [My great sad-ness]. It had no political message at all.But because the chorus was a bit am-biguous—it was about death,people be-ing lost to us, and as you know,by chang-ing a single vowel, the entire meaningchanges—everybody thought we weretrying to make trouble.EM: About all the political kidnappingsat the time.OS: Right, but that wasn’t the point.Wetried to explain, but they didn’t under-

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stand, and they kept giving us trouble. Soin the end I just went to the police sta-tion and said,“All right, look, the song isabout Palestine.” <PQ6>EM: And they believed you?OS:Yes. And it made it easier for every-one, because that was a recognizable po-litical cause that people could rally be-hind. But I really think that that’s thekind of thinking that turns artists intocannibals. If you only sing abouttragedies and great causes, you end upwaiting for a thousand students to bethrown in prison, just so you can find theinspiration to perform. I don’t believe inanthems.Artists aren’t supposed to chaseafter the events and tragedies of theworld. Make an event of your own life,your own art.EM: Moroccans often refer to you guysas the Beatles of Morocco.There may besome truth to that, but I feel that theconnection between Nass el Ghiwaneand Morocco is unique—if anything,you mean more to your fans, in an oddway, than the Beatles meant to theirs.OS:Well, there’s a certain respect.Whenyou go out on the town with me, whenwe get into a taxi, you’ll see. Becausewhen I get into a taxi, it’s as myself, notas a star.We greet each other like family,even though we don’t know each other,because in some way the taxi driver feelsthat we are family.EM:Yes, but there’s something else, too.It seems like your music is everywhere;your fans come from every region of thiscountry, every social class, every agegroup. How do you explain that?OS:You should probably ask the histori-ans about that. I can’t explain it myself,except to say that there is a deep con-nection. So deep that it scares me, some-

times. I ask myself, “Why do these peo-ple respect Nass el Ghiwane in thisway?” I have never thought that it waspurely because of our music. It’s also be-cause they are aware that we don’t havethe freedom of expression that weshould have. It’s not like it is in theUnited States. The Rolling Stones cando whatever they want, say whateverthey want.We can’t, and what’s more, asan artist in Morocco, you don’t have anysecurity.EM: Security against what?

OS: Social security. The only thing anartist can depend on is his children. Ithink that people here are aware of thatfact, and they respect us for continuingto find a way to make art despite the dif-ficulties.EM: But surely you aren’t doing so bad?I mean, your group is the most success-ful band in the country. If anything,you’d think that people would feel spite-ful for your success.OS: Not at all, for a couple of reasons.First of all, whatever success we’ve had,we haven’t flaunted it.We’re not out buy-ing airplanes like the rock stars in Amer-ica. But the real answer to your questionis this: being the first successful band ofour kind in Morocco meant that wewere the first to be taken advantage of by

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When the rooster crows in the morning, he

sings five notes. The notes are identical

to the ones in the pentatonic scale that all of

Berber music is built on. No matter where

the rooster is, in Russia, in Bolivia, in China,

he sings five notes. That’s because the

rooster is Berber.

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piracy. In fact, the piracy industry in Mo-rocco developed into what it is today be-cause of us. So, don’t be fooled by whatyou see in the cassette shops.We’re notgetting a cent of most of it. But gettingback to your original question, I thinkpeople respect us because they identifiedcompletely with what we were singing.EM: Maybe it’s a Middle Eastern phe-nomenon. Millions of Arabs felt thesame way about Umm Koulthoum.OS: But we didn’t set out to be a trulyMoroccan group.When we first started,we were playing with a guy named Alial-Qadiri.He hoped that we would turnout to be a Western-style rock band.EM:You were originally called the NewDervishes, right?OS:Yes. Al-Qadiri was determined toturn us into a foreign band. He said,“You have to wear different trousers.And no shirts.”

I said, “What if it’s cold?” He didn’tthink that was funny, but I was serious.“And what about the fat guys?” Even inthose days, some of us were quite plump.“And the scars?”You know, it’s not likeit is in France, where all the singers aregood-looking.

So in the end, we decided against the whole approach. We wore regularclothes.We called ourselves Nass el Ghi-wane. And that was the end of it.

Omar Sayyed

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