The “Schizophrenic Nation”
Ethics of Critique in Morocco’s Post-Arab Spring Popular Music
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/jwpm.36675Keywords:
Arab Spring, hip hop, Morocco, protest, resistanceAbstract
This article discusses popular music portrayals of collective actions like those in the Moroccan 20 February movement. Artists use the trope of Morocco as a “schizophrenic nation” to denote enculturation into two potentially conflicting value systems, but also to depict collective actions as dangerous because they encourage a break between the people and the state. The examples analysed thus effectively reproduce understandings of the nation promoted by the state. Moroccan “schizophrenia” discourse, and the subtle ways it is invoked, offers the opportunity to complicate understandings of resistant agency in hip hop. While artists critique some aspects of state policy, they may promote a quietist or normative view on others.
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Alaoui, Khadija, Mohamed Kadimi, Ayoub Akil and Nadia Ziane. 2007. “Le Rap réinvente la chanson Marocaine”. Libération, 19 March. http://www.bladi.net/rap-marocain.html (accessed 24 April 2011).
Allali, Reda and Hassan Hamdani. 2006. “Blad Skizo”. TelQuel 243: n.p. https://tinyurl.com/20061105165510 (accessed 2 April 2016).
Basu, Dipannita and Sidney Lemelle, eds. 2006. The Vinyl Ain’t Final: Hip-Hop and the Globalization of Black Popular Culture. London and Ann Arbor: Pluto Press.
Belghazi, Taeib. 2009. “The Enemy Within: Perceptions of Moroccan Hard Rock Musicians”. Langues et Litteratures 19: 143–62.
Benchemsi, Ahmed. 2014. “Morocco’s Makhzen and the Haphazard Activists”. In Taking to the Streets: The Transformation of Arab Activism, edited by Lina Khatib and Ellen Lust, 199–235. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
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Bennani-Chraibi, Mounia and Mohamed Jeghllaly. 2012. “La dynamique protestataire du Mouvement du 20 février à Casablanca”. Revue francaise des sciences politiques 62/5: 867–94.
Berque, Jacques. 1956. “Cent vingt-cinq ans de sociologie maghrébine”. Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales 11/3: 296–324. https://doi.org/10.3406/ahess.1956.2554
Bousfiha, Momo. 2016. “Al-Farq Bayn Kan Ya Makan al-Jadida u al-Qadima” (“The difference between the old and the new ‘Kan Ya Makan’”). Morning with Momo [radio program]. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUixZc6cgXk (accessed 3 April 2016).
Bowles, Paul F. 1959–1962. Folk, Popular, and Art Music of Morocco: The Paul Bowles Moroccan Music Collection. Washington, DC: American Folklife Center, Library of Congress.
Burke III, Edmund. 1972. “The Image of the Moroccan State in French Ethnological Literature: A New Look at the Origin of Lyautey’s Berber Policy”. In Arabs and Berbers: From Tribe to Nation in North Africa, edited by Ernest Gellner and Charles Micaud, 175–99. Lexington, MA: Lexington Books.
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Catusse, Myriam. 2008. Le temps des entrepreneurs? Politique et transformations du capitalisme au Maroc. Tunis: Institut de recherche sur le Maghreb contemporain.
Cohen, Shana and Larabi Jaidi. 2006. Morocco: Globalization and Its Consequences. London: Routledge.
Gilroy, Paul. 1993. The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Gilson Miller, Susan. 2013. A History of Modern Morocco. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Gottreich, Emily. 2007. The Mellah of Marrakesh: Jewish and Muslim Space in Morocco’s Red City. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Hibbard, Allen. 2016. “A Review of Music of Morocco: recorded by Paul Bowles, 1959”. Journal of North African Studies 21/4: 593–98. https://doi.org/10.1080/13629387.2016.1207888
Hoffman, Katherine E. 2008. “Purity and Contamination: Language Ideologies in French Colonial Native Policy in Morocco”. Comparative Studies in Society and History 50/3: 724–52. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0010417508000315
Jackson, John L. 2005. Real Black: Adventures in Racial Sincerity. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press.
Keyes, Cheryl. 2002. Rap Music and Street Consciousness. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press.
Kingdom of Morocco. 2011. “Dahir [Decree] no. 1-11-91 du 27 chaabane 1432 (29 Juliet 2011) portent promulgation du texte de la Constitution”. Bulletin Officiel 5964 bis: 1902–1928. http://www.maroc.ma/fr/content/constitution-0
Maghraoui, Abdelslam. 2001. “Monarchy and Political Reform in Morocco.” Journal of Democracy 12/1: 73–86. https://doi.org/10.1353/jod.2001.0010
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Mahmood, Saba. 2003. “Ethical Formation and Politics of Individual Autonomy in Contemporary Egypt”. Social Research 70/3: 837–66.
—2016. Religious Difference in a Secular Age: A Minority Report. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Marcus, Scott. 2004. Music in Egypt: Experiencing Music, Expressing Culture. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Mernissi, Fatema. 2002 [1992]. Islam and Democracy: Fear of the Modern World. New York: Basic Books.
Miller, Catherine and Dominique Caubet. 2012. “Langue et textes: des Ghiwanes à la nouvelle scène avant et après le 20 février”. https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-00682688 (accessed 1 July 2014).
Muhanna, Elias. 2003. “Folk the Kasbah: A conversation with Omar Sayyed, leader of Nass el Ghiwane”. Transition 94: 133–49.
Pennell, C. R. 2000. Morocco Since 1830: A History. London and New York: New York University Press.
Perry, Marc D. 2008. “Global Black Self-Fashionings: Hip Hop as Diasporic Space”. Identities 15/6: 635–64. https://doi.org/10.1080/10702890802470660
Quinn, Eithne. 2005. Nuthin’ But a “G” Thang: The Culture and Commerce of Gangsta Rap. New York: Columbia University Press.
Reporters Without Borders. 2017. “Morocco Obstructs Coverage of Rif Protests”. Reporters Without Borders for Freedom of Information. https://rsf.org/en/news/morocco-obstructs-coverage-rif-protests (accessed 13 September 2017).
Salime, Zakia. 2015. “‘I Vote I Sing’: The Rise of Aesthetic Citizenship in Morocco”. International Journal of Middle East Studies 47: 136–39. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020743814001494
—2016a. “‘The Women are Coming’: Gender, Space, and the Politics of Inauguration”. In Freedom without Permission: Bodies and Space in the Arab Revolutions, edited by Frances S. Hasso and Zakia Salime, 138–65. Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press. https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822373728
—2016b. “Embedded Counterpublics: Women and Islamic Revival in Morocco”. Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies 37/3: 47–73.
Salois, Kendra. 2016. “Fleas in the Sheepskin: Glocalization and Cosmopolitanism in Moroccan Hip Hop.” In Islam and Popular Culture, edited by Karin van Nieuwkerk, Martin Stokes and Mark LeVine, 364–82. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.
Schloss, Joseph G. 2009. Foundation: B-boys, B-girls and Hip-Hop Culture in New York. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195334067.001.0001
Simour, Lhoussain. 2016. Larbi Batma, Nass el-Ghiwane and Postcolonial Music in Morocco. Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Company.
Slyomovics, Susan. 2005. The Performance of Human Rights in Morocco. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Spadola, Emilio. 2008. “The Scandal of Ecstasy: Communication, Sufi Rites, and Social Reform in 1930s Morocco”. Contemporary Islam 2: 119–38. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11562-008-0047-x
Turino, Thomas. 2003. “Are We Global Yet? Globalist Discourse, Cultural Formations and the Study of Zimbabwean Popular Music”. British Journal of Ethnomusicology 12/2: 51–79. https://doi.org/10.1080/09681220308567363
Wyrtzen, Jonathan. 2015. Making Morocco: Colonial Intervention and the Politics of Identity. Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press. https://doi.org/10.7591/cornell/9781501700231.001.0001
Published
2018-06-08
Issue
Section
Articles
How to Cite
Salois, K. (2018). The “Schizophrenic Nation”: Ethics of Critique in Morocco’s Post-Arab Spring Popular Music. Journal of World Popular Music, 5(1), 88-107. https://doi.org/10.1558/jwpm.36675
