THERE ARE many genres of Moroccan music. It includes Arab, Berber, classical, and popular elements. Musicians perform in concerts, in cafes, at private homes, ceremonies, marriages, funerals, and religious processions. It is also used to accompany dancing and storytelling:
Samples of Moroccan music
[Focus Multimedia]
A Mile in Our Shoes
A musical journey through Morocco [moroccanmusic.com]
Cultural mix
Moroccan music and Western pop
Marrakesh Express
The hippies have long-since gone, but you can still hear the song that sent them flocking to Marrakesh in the 1960s.
Rolling Stones
Back to Morocco in 1989 to record with Moroccan musicians for the track Continental Drift. "Continental Drift is an interesting experiment with Moroccan rhythms".
Al-Andalus
Contemporary Andalusian music and dance by a group currently based in the US.Their artistic director is from Morocco and they have many Moroccan and Arab musical influences.
Brian Jones
Brian Jones, djellabahs and the Master Musicians of Jojouka: Got together to record for an album in 1968, 'The Pipes of Pan'. It sounds a bit like modern jazz, like John Coltrane or Ornette Coleman, although it’s really pagan trance music.
Dance
THESE dances are performed on festive occasions, often at night around a bonfire:
AHOUASH (High Atlas): Only women perform in this dance, forming a large circle while the men, each holding a bendir, squat around a big fire.
AHAIDOUS (Middle Atlas): Singers and dancers make a huge circle where men and women beat the ground rhythmically.
GUEDRA (southern Morocco): The dancer starts her performance kneeling, entirely covered with a black veil. The steady rhythm of the guedra (a "cooking pot") becomes insistent and the dancer's fingers start undulating.
TISSINT (south of Agadir): men and women entirely clad in indigo-blue dance as if performing a rite. It is the dance of the dagger.
GNAWA: Of African origin, the dance of the gnawa has a magico-religious aspect. Some of the dancers achieve great acrobat skills.
TASKIOUINE (High Atlas - Ouarzazate): This is a warriors' dance. Dancers with white tunics, holding a powder flask on their shoulders, beat time to the music of a drum.
The Casbah Dance Experience
Based in New York, this is a non-profit organisation which seeks to preserve traditional dances and present them to a wider audience.
Al Guedra
Guedra is a trance ceremony from the Southwest of Morocco. It belongs to the Blue People of the Tuareg Berber. The word Guedra means cauldron/cooking pot.
Belly Dance from Morocco
- with Real Audio
