Some Music from al Magrebia.

I thought, since i dedicated the post below to morocco in pictures, i should post a few words, too, so i'll do that now-

North african music was a highlight of my travels, Berber music in particular, which was played loudly in front of restaurants and cafes, in front of shops and in houses in the High Atlas. Im certainly not the first to be surprised by its beauty and freshness, theres a lot of study by ethnomusicologists (For good reason!) of the beautiful and alluring art they create there.

People sing in north Africa, and they dance; music is embedded in the culture. The elaborate echoing Adhan sent out from loudspeakers on the mosque every morning (woke me up always at 5:30, particularly on fridays) calls the faithful to prayer (and they do go! oh they do). Then they ring out 4 more times before days end, every day framed with short musical prayers. It reminded me i wasnt in france anymore, and that in fact i was somewhere far more interesting.

Currently im listening to the gorgeous music of Larbi Imghrane (the link is a good preview of his music) which fuses traditional berber songs with more modern instrumentation and electronics. The rich in lyricism and beauty. The CD i own, is Series of immortal songs, volume 1: The best of Raiss Ahmed Bizmaven- bought in Marakech's Djemaa El Fna square (photos 5 and 6 in the previous post). Mr. Imghrane is pretty famous in morocco, so its possible to find lots of his music online, thankfully. Unfortunately i cant read Arabic, so i dont know the name of my favorite song on my Cd, track 4, but i can assure you its really lovely.

A section from the first track of my CD HERE, forgive the cheesy video. Its in a Berber dialect, by the way, not Arabic, so most Moroccans probably dont know the words either.