"Maghrebi Bops and Half" by Tal Slon
Before coming to Morocco, my Arabic playlist was a sad 15 minutes long, almost entirely Middle Eastern. After four months of living in Rabat, my ears have been exposed to all kinds of Moroccan music. There’s Gnawa, a mix of West African and Sahwari sounds centered around little metal drums and hypnotic voices. There’s Shaabi, celebratory communal music punctuated by horns and whistles that varies hugely from region to region. There’s Rap music that effortlessly flows between Darija and French. There’s Marrakchi music and Amazigh music that sounds like someone is yelling directly into your bones until you vibrate in beauty. One of my favorite activities over the months has been collecting songs for my playlist, knowing that when I leave this place the sounds I’ve gathered will transport me right back into the Sahara or a busy medina street or my host family’s living room. Enjoy listening!
Tek Tek: our host niece’s favorite song! As we all gather around our communal lunch plate, she’ll jump up from the table and put Tek Tek on the big TV. The next four minutes are a mishmash of her frantic ecstatic dance moves punctuated by frenzied sing-shouting of certain lyrics. The whole thing ends with an ear-to-ear grin as she looks over to make sure we’ve enjoyed her performance (spoiler alert: we did).
Dirou Niyya: needs to have its own blog post to be honest but this is the most important song in the Maghreb. The national fan song of the Moroccan World Cup team in 2022, if you can whip this song out you’re sure to make immediate friends.
Sad Clarinet: this was the first song we ever asked about. Walking through the souk of Sale we heard this soulful jam blasting from a hat shop (think flat brims and American sports team logos on display). As we began to enter the shop, he paused the music thinking we were there to shop… or ask him to turn it down considering his was the only shop blasting music. We walked in, confidence blooming, and asked “shno smeet hathihi oghnea?” and, without missing a beat, he showed us his phone, the song lighting up the screen. Not a word of English passed between us and in that moment, it seemed like we were really going to get this whole Morocco thing.
Bakhta by Chab Khaled: this song was sourced from a taxi driver at 8:30 on a Tuesday evening in early September. Moroccans seem to be so used to foreigners meeting them in their French that every time we use Darija, it seems to light something up in them (when they can understand darija/Arabic is what we’re going for). We got in the taxi and opened with “Salaam” which could make us classic gouriyat but then we swiftly moved to ‘Labbas?’ and ‘Kayfik?’ and ‘Alhumdillila.’ With every phrase his smile seemed wider and when I asked a little while later, “Sma7eeli, shno smeet hathihi orghnea?” he was more than happy to tell me it was Chab Khaled ‘an Algerian!’ although he said “Al-Rai” leading us to think the song was called “Al-Rai”. When we got home the search began but alas, no Al-Rai and boy did Chab Khaled release a lot of songs! After 20 minutes of frantic searching with no luck dinner was called. As we recounted our tale to our host mom double-took at the mention of Chab Khaled and the search began anew as a team activity over dessert. Five songs later we found the song, this song! And found out that Al-Rai is a specific genre, not a song.
EL barrad: a fan favorite of our semester cohort, this song came to us during our sojourn in the Sahara. It’s a Marrakchi cover of a classic song in which a guy just sings about his teapot. Al Barrad literally means ‘teapot.’ Our cohort has been known to break out in song and dance in multiple foreign countries when this song comes on (because someone has requested it).
Check out Tal’s full playlist on our Spotify, here:
Tal Slon is a student from the University of Southern California studying abroad on the Amideast Morocco Area and Arabic Language Studies program during the Fall 2023 semester.
