The Author's Positionality

I am an Amazigh woman who grew up in Meknes, Morocco. My parents are both Imazighen (plural of Amazigh) from the Amazigh community of Ait Belkacem, which is in the Khémisset Province, east of Rabat. However, I grew up in the city of Meknes, which is east of Khémisset. I belong to the Amazigh people, who are the Indigenous people of North Africa. Imazighen refer to their region as Tamazgha, a term coined by many Amazigh activists to describe the lands extending from the Canary Islands on the west to Siwa in Egypt on the east, and Mali and Niger on the south. I grew up speaking Tamazight with my parents at home, but Arabic and French outside of the house. During my childhood in the eighties, Tamazight was neither taught in schools nor recognized as an official language in Morocco, as it is today. My ethnic and linguistic identity as an Amazigh was mirrored only at home, and Rouicha was part of my universe.

I am not only writing this essay about Rouicha because he is merely a legend of Amazigh music, but also because he was the first Amazigh singer I heard as a child. My father used to play Rouicha on his stereo by means of mini cassettes. His music served as a reminder of my Amazigh identity even though I lived in the city where my mother tongue was not visible and audible. My father was so enamored by Rouicha's music that he would play some songs several times to understand their lyrical nuances and depth. Growing up in this context, I loved listening to Rouicha's music as well, and I was hoping to understand the lyrics one day and write about the legacy of this Amazigh singer. It is important to note that Amazigh inquiry is relational. Therefore, my father, Hamadi Mnouer, and my colleague Omar Oukahou assisted me in translating the lyrics from Tamazight to Arabic.

Amazigh Music and Tamazight

Tamazgha has experienced colonialism from the Phoenicians, Romans, Byzantines, Arabs, French, and Spanish.Footnote ¹ Amazigh people resisted colonialism of all its sorts and shapes. The French Protectorate (1912–56) had a strategy of separating Moroccans to advance France's colonial agenda. The Berber Decree of 1930 was presumably passed to divide Morocco into Amazigh and Arab parts.Footnote ² However, the classic divide-and-rule strategy failed, as Moroccans united and resisted French colonialism. Music was one of the tools of resistance used to counter colonial aspirations, and the Amazigh legendary singer, Hammū al-Yazīd, Mohamed Rouicha's mentor, was one of the Amazigh singers who lent their voice to this resistance.Footnote ³

After Morocco's independence in 1956, Imazighen's contribution to their country's liberation was rewarded by Arabization. This government program adopted and declared Arabic as the official language of Morocco, and schools, hospitals, police stations, and other sectors of public life were all areas in which Moroccans had to use Arabic as an official language. Moreover, Amazigh achievements were dismissed by Arab nationalists after independence, as they were perceived as residue of French colonialism, and thus posing a threat to the Arab-Islamic state, further marginalizing Imazighen.Footnote ⁴ Although Arabization was officially declared as targeting the French language, it also oppressed the language of Indigenous people, Tamazight. Nevertheless, Arabization did not manage to penetrate every aspect of Moroccan life. Music, for example, was one of the areas in which Tamazight was a vehicle where economic and linguistic issues were raised despite the ongoing policy of Arabization.

Amazigh music was viewed as a folkloric genre until the 1970s. However, it has evolved to become an important form of expression and communication.Footnote ⁵ Amazigh music recognizes the nuances of Amazigh poetry, lyrics, and themes that discuss issues associated with colonialism such as Uḍeed Ikleed and Taxi Yayeen by Hammū al-Yazīd.Footnote ⁶ I could not unfortunately find recordings of these songs. Themes also revolve around love, including the works of a nineteenth-century Amazigh Kabyle poet whose words are still sung today.Footnote ⁷ For example, Hammū al-Yazīd in his song Tiwald describes the love of his daughter who just got married: Tiwald ayllinu awa tiwald, (“You got married, my beloved daughter”), Tiwald awnna tmoun iharra ulinu, (“You got married, my beloved and you left a bitterness and soreness in my heart”).Footnote ⁸ People would hear Amazigh music on the radio, the television, and in different events such as weddings and such. Mohamed Rouicha was a pioneer singer and composer who took tradition and mixed it with modernity to create his own mark in the history of Amazigh music, especially in the Middle Atlas, where he is originally from, in central Morocco.

Mohamed Rouicha: The Legend

Rouicha was born in 1955 and passed away in 2012. His musical legacy encompasses both Arabic and Tamazight, and his songs serve as classics of Amazigh music. Although he worked with different poets who furnished him with poems in Arabic and Tamazight, Rouicha did not reveal their names. However, before committing to the words and composing the music, he would discuss the meaning of the poems and lyrics with colleagues and close friends, such as Azzedine, Aziz, and Professor Bibi.Footnote ⁹ Reflecting his rigor, creativity, and discipline, his songs in Tamazight reflect a typical poetic genre prevalent in the Middle Atlas. The songs are short and contain several verses of usually two hemistiches separated by a refrain.Footnote ¹⁰ This poetic genre combined with Rouicha's mastery of luṭār gave his music a distinctive identity throughout Morocco.

Rouicha attributes the appearance of luṭār (Amazigh musical instrument) in the Middle Atlas to a seventeenth-century musician named Oberha, who was a member of the Amazigh tribe called Ichquiren.Footnote ¹¹ Luṭār is a three-cord instrument. However, Rouicha added a fourth string at the end of the twentieth century, so that he could play all the musical maqāmāt. Maqāmāt are generally understood as melody types.Footnote ¹² Although some purists critiqued Rouicha for losing his authenticity by tailoring to other musical styles and singing in other languages, it could be argued that the addition was a response to his need to expand the potential of Amazigh music while remaining faithful to the instrument's indigeneity. Thus, adding the fourth string while still giving centrality to his Amazigh instrument is both an act of genius creativity and Indigenous pride. In this sense, Rouicha indigenized other musical genres by making them playable on luṭār. Moreover, for Rouicha, whether he was intentional or not about making his songs accessible to people, the impact of the addition of the fourth string meant that his songs were undeniably present in all Morocco and beyond.

Growing up in Khenifra, known as the queen of the Middle Atlas, in the postcolonial period, Rouicha belonged to a generation for whom music brought joy.Footnote ¹³ Rouicha started recording songs in 1979 in Tamazight and in Dārija (Moroccan spoken dialect). As a lead singer and instrument player, Rouicha sang while playing luṭār and was accompanied by a group of male and female singers who repeated after him either by taking turns or in unison. This means that the female singers would sing the chorus, and the male singers would repeat the chorus and vice versa. Bandīr (tambourine) players were essential as they both played their instruments and sang the tunes. His recording was phenomenal, and his repertoire grew by sixteen recordings a year in addition to his recordings for television and radio channels.Footnote ¹⁴

Rouicha's musical genealogy harks back to the works of his master Hammū al-Yazīd. Hammū was born in 1927 in Ayn Luh (a small town in the Ifrane province in Morocco) where he grew up and become a cobbler, then later a nurse. There, he and many friends of the region shared the love of Amazigh music and the playing of lutār.Footnote ¹⁵ Al-Yazīd was known as the chancellor of Amazigh music, for he was the one that set the stage for Amazigh music and was a great composer and well respected and loved by his community.Footnote ¹⁶ Rouicha was one of the lutār-learning students of Hammū al-Yazīd and he was one of his band members and travelled with him to different locations for musical concerts. Footnote ¹⁷ In addition to learning lutār from his mentor, Rouicha also re-sang and re-interpreted some of Hammū al-Yazīd's songs,Footnote ¹⁸ including Awa Yaymanu (“oh, my mother”), which he sang with artists Ali Wada and Chrifa. Footnote ¹⁹

Rouicha, was also influenced by the climate in which he lived. His songs spoke of love and economic and migration struggles. His composition was so carefully executed that one felt like the protagonist in his songs. His stage name, “Roui-cha” means “mix something,” and is the phrase Rouicha's mother used to call him when she wanted to listen to his art. He indeed was the king of innovation in that his music transcended geographical boundaries and played in rural and urban Morocco, Europe, and Japan (see, e.g., Abībyu Sghuy (“Oh love”), Mūn dizm (“Befriend the lion”), Sal sal (“Ask about me”), Awra smlu u khlij (“Come to the shade”), and Inās Inās (“Tell him”). Rouicha continued to evolve and rise internationally until his death in 2012. The aforementioned songs will be analyzed in detail in the next section.

The Theme of Love

The theme of love pervaded Rouicha's music in the songs he sang in both Tamazight and Arabic. For Rouicha, love is a noble thing that is very hard to obtain. In his very first recorded song, Abibyu Sghuy, he sings in Tamazight:

What is love without honey and its sweetness? Rouicha emphasizes the word anmun (“for us to unite”). Love for Rouicha should bring unification; striving for unity is noble. Although translation, no matter how accurate, cannot do justice to the beauty of the original song, Rouicha's Amazigh singing allows us to want to find this love that encourages unity. Given its recording in 1967, only a decade after Morocco's independence, the song's message of love and unification is salient, and the warning of Abibyu Sghuy could be directed toward those in Morocco pushing for separation – in language (Arabic vs. Tamazight), and geography (urban vs. rural), and political identity. The Moroccan Association for Cultural Exchange (AMREC) was created in 1967 to defend the linguistic and cultural rights of the Amazigh. The birth of this non-governmental association marked the start of activism in Morocco to elevate Amazigh culture and language. Therefore, Rouicha's song playing on the radio in the late sixties in Tamazight, even though some people did not understand its meaning, transmitted a message of rebirth for Amazigh culture and Tamazight language. It embodied a call for a national unity that was respectful of ethnic diversity, hidden behind an individual love story in Abibyu Sghuy.

Rouicha was not prevented by success from continuing to evolve. One of his major innovations was the introduction of Tamawayt (“the female companion”) with a full accompaniment of music. Tamawayt originated in the Middle Atlas mountains and it is a poem that consists of two verses generally, sung with a high-pitched melody to express love and agony.Footnote ²⁰ In the song entitled, Sāl Sāl (“ask about, ask about”), Rouicha sings the tamawayt verses using his luṭār instrument, accompanied by tambourine, after the female singer enunciates the tamawayt first. Rouicha responds to her expressions by luṭār before he starts singing tamawayt. Then, he adds new verses to tamawayt. The lyrics of Sāl Sāl are as follows:

In the song above, the theme of love is still prominent in Rouicha's music. This time, Rouicha insists on a pure and everlasting love in which only death parts the lovers. If broken, it cannot be mended: Mād isday taghul adigafi asawn (“the rock that cannot return to its original place once it falls”). Rouicha's style of imagery is very present when it comes to love. His songs are categorized by repetition to present a sense of urgency to the matter. Sāl, sāl (“ask about me, ask about me”), this repetition suggests urgency to tell the story of how one has loved. It is important to note that, though Rouicha talks about pure love, he is still expressing disappointment and sorrow, which is also very distinctive of the tamawayt theme. Rouicha is centered around the embodied experience of how the one who is in love is also in agony. In Abibyu Sghuy, he depicts this imagery as well when he says Wnnan imzwura ksn tammnt i lwha abibiyu sghuy (“those before us came and took sweetness from the honey”). Rouicha's theme of love in his Amazigh songs is both sweet and bitter. Easy and hard. Pure but betrayed. This duality in his lyrics can represent love for the Amazigh language and culture.

The Theme of Struggle

Rouicha depicts the feeling of struggle in other songs he sang in Tamazight, particularly ones about Morocco's economic hardships, foreign debt, and unemployment. We can see this in the lyrics of Inās Inās (“tell him, tell him”), probably the most popular song in this repertoire. This song did not come to prominence until shortly before his death, and later the Egyptian singer Hamza Namira remade it in a YouTube video, which garnered over 13.5 million views.Footnote ²¹ Rouicha sings:

The Amazigh lyrics of Inās Inās are sung by many people, Amazighophones and non-alike. Rouicha refers to the social condition of all Moroccans. The song communicates the embodied experiences many Moroccans went through during the economic crises of the eighties and the nineties. When he sings Wra yisnaqqas i atsart ghas jīb Ikhwan (“And nothing detracts from a person's pride, but an empty pocket”), he describes the struggle during these tough economic conditions. Similarly, when he sings Inās Inās. Mayrikh, Mayrikh, Adasikh i zman (“Tell him, tell him, how would you want me to deal with these tough times”), he expresses the struggle in the face of difficult economic conditions, and I argue that he is asking the government to intervene. “Tell him” could be directed to the parliament. Rouicha is asking the state officials to act, and he is asking them how they expect people to continue with such harsh conditions.

Inās Inās touched many Moroccans around the globe. Singing it in Tamazight and having millions of people interact with his tunes and sing the lyrics, Rouicha did what Morocco could not do prior to 2011 (when Tamazight was integrated officially in the Moroccan constitution); he drew attention not only to the language and culture through singing in Tamazight, but also to the struggle of Amazigh people within Morocco. This theme of struggle continues to evolve in his songs, but this time the struggle refers to mobility and migration. Rouicha's message for unity here is a call for all Moroccans to recognize the plight of migrants whether this migration is from rural to urban contexts or to Europe. His song, Awra (“come”) exemplifies this struggle:

In this moving lyrical song,Footnote ²² Rouicha embodies the inner struggle of people away from their home. The listener enters in conversation with the singer. Rouicha describes the hardship that comes with one's absence from their homeland, the strangeness of a new place. He repeats the first line of each musical verse three times, signaling a call to an important issue. Such as, awra, awra, awra (“come, come, come”) and Aday walf cha (“When I get accustomed to”). This technique leaves suspense over what is going to come next and puts emphasis on the issue. Rouicha is telling people to rethink leaving their land, that the journey will not be easy: “save yourself, as it is too late for me.” “Me” could symbolize those who left and are far from their Indigenous lands.

This lyrical style of conversation allows the listener to see themselves as heroes in the story. Even though Rouicha has been abroad, singing with different people in different cultures, he always remained faithful to his native land, Khenifra, whenever he returned. It is not difficult to imagine how the homeland is constantly missed by the immigrant who agrees with Rouicha: lla demʿad adas yali ghr l ʿali (“why did you want to climb the mountain and endure its adversity?”). It is important to note that in the late nineties, Morocco witnessed an increase in urban population because of rural exodus, especially to the city of Casablanca. Therefore, it was only natural to discuss the migration phenomenon. Tamazight was not spoken in big cities, and Amazigh people migrating to the city had to learn a new dialect and function mainly in Arabic, then French. This forced suppression of the Tamazight language was, and is still, a continuous struggle that many Amazigh face in urban areas.

The Theme of Resistance

Rouicha's song themes not only highlight the plight of Amazigh migrants from rural to urban areas, but also abroad. Rouicha in Awra and Inās Inās depicts resistance. He is asking migrants to resist the assimilation that can result from being far from one's Indigenous land. Morocco witnessed the highest flow migrants of North Africans to Europe, which prompted the European Union to create policies to regulate immigration to Europe.Footnote ²³ Many migrants found themselves facing assimilation in their new environments. For example, in the case of first- and second-generation migrants who traveled to Europe, the former colonial empire, they succeeded in achieving upward social mobility, while assimilating into their migrant contexts in terms of language and culture.Footnote ²⁴ In this way they are viewed as “the good immigrants.” Therefore, Rouicha is telling them in Awra: “save yourself, as it is too late for me.” He is asking migrants not to assimilate and bury their culture like the ones before them did to survive in their new migrant environments. Every immigrant or anyone displaced from their native language or land undergoes an inner struggle and can feel that it is their own story. Rouicha, an artist that communicates the realities of the people, is warning people who want to migrate by asking them to reconsider their choice, as migration will change their ties to the land and family. He is preparing migrants for the struggle they are facing ahead of their migrant journeys.

Awra is in conversation with Inās Inās. Both songs speak to each other through the unifying theme of hardship, which is manifested in social and economic adversities. In an era where not only migration of Amazigh people from rural to urban areas was common, but where Morocco was also witnessing censorship and suppression of intellectual freedom, Rouicha's music represented not only a refuge for suppressed people, but also an act of resistance and a sense of protection. Rouicha is not asking us to surrender; he is asking us to protect ourselves, as we resist censorship and inequity of all sorts. Rouicha, in Awra, reminds us of the comfort of the shade in Tamazgha: Awra yawa Awara smlu u khlij (“Come to the shade. Hey! Come”), as we resist assimilation and inequity.Footnote ²⁵ He also continues to be inspired by the beauty of his region and takes on other symbols that are important to many Amazigh people. In his song, Mūn Dizen (“Befriend the Lion”), the lion is a symbol of loyalty and strength for the Amazigh.Footnote ²⁶

The geography of the Middle Atlas Mountains is diverse, as it encompasses plains, plateaus, cedars, hilltops, and different mountain ranges. In this sense, Rouicha was inspired by the beauty of the Atlas Mountains. As a native of Khenifra, he asks fellow Amazigh people to take mountains as a refuge, and a lion as a friend; the lion and the mountain represent symbols of Amazigh power and resistance against foreign threats, as they relate to the sense of place that encompasses a relationship to nature. The lions were symbolic animals in the Middle Atlas. The sighting of lions in the Middle and High Atlas Mountains was still present in the twentieth century.Footnote ²⁷ Rouicha in this song is honoring the long-standing relationship of the Amazigh to their natural world, which is symbolized through the reverence of the lion. However, in the next verse, Rouicha says more: Ā dha ywalf cha yun w mazeer yaghul ymmouti (“how could one sleep when his homeplace is changed?”). The sense of place in this verse could be related to leaving one's home to seek upward mobility in the city. It is important to realize that Tamazight language and culture had not been integrated in Morocco's parliament until 2011, well after Rouicha sang this song. When he says Amma bnadm dachighddr adur atamen walu (“As for the human, treachery is one of his traits, he is not to be trusted”), there is a theme of resistance. The human who shall not be trusted could be symbolized as a national Moroccan identity, which did not reconcile with the Amazigh identity. The human here could also refer to the urban context that forces the Amazigh to change different aspects of their identity to fit in the new social and linguistic context.

Rouicha carries on and sings: Wnna chmid idizan a tawuujilt a thar lwali (“Those who despise you… and you are an orphan”). This lyric continues the theme of resistance in that Tamazight and Amazigh culture is not fought for by the parliament. It does not have its defenders in the parliament. The language and the people, especially in rural areas, have been less privileged and even marginalized because Tamazight (the orphan) does not have the constitution fighting for it. The image he uses here is that Tamazight is deceived by those that despise it, like an orphan waiting for protection and safety. Therefore, he is asking Imazighen to seek refuge in their lands and be strong and resilient just like a lion in the Atlas who fights foreign threats that come its way.

Rouicha's embodiment of native land and the comfort it provides is also seen in his song, Awra (“come”) where he sings: Protect yourself, the noon sun will burn you. When Arabic was declared as an official language, the status of Tamazight was not integrated in public life with, e.g., interpreters in courts, hospitals, and other institutions.Footnote ²⁸ Moreover, even though many people in Morocco speak Tamazight, Arabic and French are considered prestige languages, spoken by the privileged.Footnote ²⁹ Rouicha invokes the mountain and the lion – Mun dizem yufach, ddu kufiyat I lʿwari (“Take the lion and the mountain as a refuge”) – and shade – Qqim chi awa, qim chi awa, Qim chi atsmalut azzal nk atawikh shili (“Protect yourself, the noon sun will burn you, it is too late for me, it hit me already”) – as metaphors in asking the Amazigh to not forget their roots. The use of the different symbols of nature (strength and resilience of mountains and lions, the refuge of the shade) makes the listener appreciate the versatility with which Rouicha remains truthful to his Amazigh centrality.

Rouicha was not afraid of using Arabic in his lyrics such as Rbbi (“my god”) and Ṣabr (“patience”). In Sāl Sāl, the title is derived from the Arabic isʾal (“ask”). Rouicha had Arabic and Tamazight intertwined and interconnected in his music to communicate a sort of plurality in Morocco, and he wanted Morocco to be that way. He wanted to pluralize, not to polarize. He had a vision that music would connect people together in a cross-cultural, multilinguistic, multiethnic Morocco where different languages and cultures are celebrated and valued. However, for that to happen, Amazigh music and cultures need to be integrated. Making Tamazight an official language in 2011 and starting the Royal Institute of Amazigh Culture in Rabat in 2001 was still not enough. Nevertheless, Rouicha's music and lyrical style were marked by love and hope underneath the suffering he sang through his vibrant luṭār. He imagined a Morocco where different languages and cultures are united while always showing pride in his Indigenous heritage. In an interview with reporter Atiq Benchigher, Rouicha stated that he is an artist, but also a psychologist in that he always wants to transmit, through his music, the suffering and embodied experiences of the people.Footnote ³⁰