The Sound of Protest in Morocco: Nass el Ghiwane and the Years of Lead (1970s-1990s)

Episode 216: The Sound of Protest in Morocco: Nass el Ghiwane and the Years of Lead (1970s-1990s)

In her current project, Alessandra Ciucci is Associate Professor of Ethnomusicology at Columbia University in New York, posits that in order to understand the effectiveness of the songs of Nass el Ghiwane it is critical to examine their musicopoetic assemblage with its rich web of citations and intertextual references, and to acknowledge the force of the band’s sound that Moroccans heard as “revolutionary” (thәuri) and with a “protest tone” (nәbra ḥtjajiya). She considers their songs as historical and emotional repositories of an era of profound transformation, as songs bearing witness to an era so marked by political violence and oppression that it came to be referred to as the “years of lead” and, at the same time, giving voice to collective hopes, dreams and aspirations. Ciucci is interested in the possibility that these songs offered in envisioning a different future in an oppressive reality and, just as importantly, the reasons for the musicians to choose the tools they used to capture the ears of a young generation.

Alessandra Ciucci’s research interests include: the music of Morocco, the Maghreb, the Mediterranean, sung poetry, popular music of the Arab World, music and migration and music and protest. Her first book, The Voice of the Rural: Music, Poetry and Masculinity among Migrant Moroccan Men in Umbria (Chicago University Press 2022), explores the significance and the endurance of a specific notion of the rural ('arubiya) among migrant Moroccan men in Italy. The Arabic translation of her writing on Moroccan professional female singer-dancers (shikhat) and on the musicopoetic genre ‘aiṭa, was published as a collection by the Edition La Croisée des Chemins in partnership with the Académie du Royaume du Maroc. She is currently at work on a new project tentatively titled Nass el Ghiwane: Popular Music and the Sound of Protest in Morocco (1970s-1990s), in which she delves into Nass el Ghiwane, the most influential group to forge a new musicopoetic language utilizing traditional Moroccan culture as a method of decolonization that also provided a sense of contemporary authenticity. Ciucci is the recipient of a number of grants and prizes, among which the Rome Prize in Modern Italian Studies (2018-19).

This episode was recorded on July 14, 2023, at the Tangier American Legation Institute for Moroccan Studies (TALIM). 

Recorded and edited by: Abdelbaar Mounadi Idrissi, Outreach Director at the Tangier American Legation Institute for Moroccan Studies (TALIM).