Across a Divide: Mediations of Contemporary Popular Music in Morocco and Spain Brian Karl Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 2012 © 2012 Brian Karl All rights reserved ABSTRACT Across a Divide: Mediations of Contemporary Popular Music in Morocco and Spain Brian Karl This dissertation is about the mediation of cross-cultural difference among Moroccan and Spanish musical practitioners. It is based on the idea that negotiations across the gaps of such difference have been promoted through the increased circulation of people, products and ideas in the modern era. Based on fieldwork during the years 2003-2007, primarily in the urban sites of Granada, Spain and Fez, Morocco, the project focuses on popular music, how both the production and reception of music are critically bound up with notions of genre, how resulting associations of musical practice are affected by different uses of technology, and how musical practices of all types partake of and help form different ideas of belonging. The understanding of genres of musical expression by listeners and performers alike serves a similar function in demonstrating affiliation with certain in-groups or belief in certain ideologies: e.g., of ethnic or national belonging; or of modern, cosmopolitan access. Tracking not only performance of certain genres but discourse about those genres provides clues to how crucial cultural and political differences are understood and mediated. Key sites for research included official venues for public concerts and cultural tourism, but also more everyday spaces of musical production and reception such as bars and cafes, homes, taxis, streets, parks, and small retail shops. In the course of my research I attended dozens of performances and rehearsals by professional and amateur musicians, trailed selected working musical groups over many months as they pursued their performance practices, and interviewed both music producers and music listeners in many different contexts. In the course of explicating the processes of musical production and reception in these locales, the project explores a broad set of related topics while framing the overall investigation theoretically. These topics include questions of migration in the modern era, of cosmopolitanism in various forms as a response to increased cross-cultural contacts due to various human movements, as well as consideration of crucial aspects of modernity– e.g. colonialism, nationalism, globalization, and cultural, economic and technological development–-all of which have been significant for cultural practices in Morocco, and among Moroccan emigrants to Spain and elsewhere in recent generations. To understand the consequences of exchange across cultural divides – from those occurring early and even within moments of first contact between different human groups, to colonial era encounters, and finally to complex cultural, economic, and political interactions in an era of increasingly globalized behaviors--social theorists from Homi Bhabha to Michael Taussig have stressed the significance of mimetic behavior in the negotiation by humans of their cultural differences. My research tracks the adoption, distortion and re-purposing of novel cultural forms, techniques, and ideas arriving from others’ distant practices as one ongoing social channel for cultural expression. It also tracks adherence to “traditional” means, along with the appropriation of innovative practices as ways of marking group inclusion and exclusion. Table of Contents Chapter One -- Negotiating Moroccan Cultural Difference in Modernity: A Theoretical Overview Negotiating Moroccan Difference in the Modern Era – A Personal Anecdote 1 Key Issues of Modernity: Colonialism, Nationalism and Difference 10 Of More than Theoretical Interest: Cosmopolitanism and Mediation 13 Chapter Summary 16 Moroccan Emigration in Modernity 19 Cosmopolitanism and Moroccan Music 35 Effects of Modernity on Moroccan Musical Practices 41 Modernity and Mimesis 44 Nationalism, Difference and Technologies in North Africa 49 Music, Modernity and Newer Media 54 Technology and Agency 60 Technology as an Aspect of Moroccan Musical Genre 64 Chapter Two -- The “Popular” in Moroccan Popular Music: A Cultural History of Sha‘bi A Popular Music Group in Modern Morocco 70 Different Kinds of Popular: Definition of Sha’bi in Morocco 80 Parallels/Divergence with Modern European Popular Musical Practices 85 Different Media of Moroccan Musical Distribution 87 Some Instances of Monetary Exchange in Moroccan Popular Music 89 Influences from Abroad in Early 20th Century Morocco 92 Development of National Music/Culture in Post-Independence Morocco 97 Social Status and (Im)Propriety of Sha‘bi in Morocco 104 Other, Non-Western Cultural Influences on Moroccan Popular Music 108 Origins of Sha‘bi 112 Instrumentation of Sha‘bi 117 Other Musical Characteristics of Sha‘bi 120 Places of Sha‘bi 123 Song Lyrics and Social Context of Sha‘bi 129 Porousness of the Stage in Sha‘bi Performed Live 136 Chapter Three -- Other Genres of Moroccan Popular Music: a Cultural Survey Context of Other Musical Genres Related to Sha‘bi 140 Al-Ala 141 Gnawa 150 Melhûn 154 Rationale for Summaries of Other Musical Genres Related to Sha“bi 158 Rai 160 Flamenco 164 Chapter Four —Across a Divide: Cosmopolitanism, Genre, and Crossover among Immigrant Moroccan Musicians in Contemporary Andalusia 170 i Citizenship through Categories of Ethnicity and Categories of Culture 175 Moroccan Migrations to Spain 180 What’s in a Name: Cultural Genre and Ethnic Grouping 186 Pragmatic Cosmopolitanism and “Crossover” among Moroccan Musicians in Andalusia 188 Moments of Friction 191 Moroccan Musicians’ Use of Gnawa in Spain 197 Flamenco and Moroccan Musicians in Spain 201 Cultural Competence and Discrepant Cosmopolitanisms 207 Continuing Exoticisms and Recent Hybridities: bailarinas del vientre in Morocco and Spain 209 Other Oriental Turns toward the West 213 Ghosts of the Past: Cultural Phantasms and Cultural Speculation 221 Recurring and Contested Nostalgia of al-Musiqa al-Andalusiyya 226 Musical Reception at Home and Abroad 230 Chapter Five -- Technology as Mediation; Mediation as Culture: Appropriation in Contemporary Popular Moroccan Music Integrating the Culturally Foreign at Home in Fez 235 Music’s Functionality as Part of Intercultural Negotiations 243 Morocco and Its Historical Relation to Outside Cultures 248 Theorizing Cultural Arrivals from Abroad 254 Agency and Naturalizing Approaches of Indigeneity 262 The Barbershop and the Music Video: Music, Technology and Mediation 264 in Moroccan Popular Music The Wah-Wah Pedal as Mediator of the Native and the Modern 271 Altered States through Ritual and Technology 276 Chapter Six – Newly Hybrid Popular Music as Nationalist Culture in Modern Morocco Instances of Contemporary Hybrid Musical Practices in Morocco 284 Introduction of Popular Musical Group Boohallee 286 Background/Genre Interests of Individual Members of Group 290 Musical Antecedents for Boohallee Thematically and Ideologically 293 Amateur Status and Networks of Possibility 295 Concluding Thoughts 302 Chapter Seven – Moroccan Popular Music, Modernity, and Mimetic Encounters Defining Modernity 309 Import of Mimetic Tendencies, Cross-Cultural and Post-Colonial 310 Introduction of Song Texts for Explication 312 Response to the Foreign or Other in Modernity 314 Evolving Phases of Reaction to Cultural Difference 315 Explication of Hoba Hoba Spirit Song text “Lmirikani” 317 Irony and Ambivalence 319 Possession as Manifestation of the Foreign 323 ii Nationalism and Nostalgia 325 Explication of Mwizo Song text “Tanjiyya” 329 Different First Contacts and Mimetic Excess 334 The Coming of the Americans and Ambivalent Cultural Consumption 338 Explication of Hussein Slaoui text “Dakhlau Lmirikani” 339 Idea of “Second Contact” 342 Background of Slaoui and Context for Reception of “Dakhlau Lmirikani” 343 Cultural Mimesis and Political Independence 345 Concluding Thoughts -- Modernity and Continuing Difference 351 Bibliography 357 Discography 375 iii Acknowledgments As solitary an enterprise as the writing of a dissertation can be, no one person, happily, can produce such a long-term research project without the responsiveness and encouragement of others: especially when the project is based in social realms such as the production and reception of music. Though this written outcome of my thinking is for ultimately and fundamentally my own responsibility (including particularly all the missteps and shortfalls of my efforts), I have relied very much on the thoughtful, material, and convivial outpourings of countless others, some of whom I would like to acknowledge here. They are in no way to blame for whatever flaws occur in the following, but I must credit them for aiding any substance or success that does exist there. First, in terms of material support, I wish to acknowledge the funding for this project that has been provided through the American Institute of Maghrib Studies, the Ali Jihad Racy/Turath Award, and by the Institute of Social Economic Research and Policy, and the Middle East Institute, these latter two both located at Columbia University. Beyond such institutional support, I enjoyed the generosity of numerous individuals who extended themselves in so many different ways to aid my own efforts to learn and understand. In Madrid, Beatriz Martinez-Barrio very kindly hosted me on numerous occasions on my way