Aïta: Chikhates & Chioukhs of the Aïta

One day they'll build a statue to honour Brahim El Mazned. The discreet producer has forged a 30-year career devoted to Morocco's flourishing world music scene. Now with this, El Mazned has delivered an audacious homage to aїta music, which is a century-old genre born of an ontogenetic fusion of Berber and Arab cultures at the heart of Morocco's identity. Two years of ethnomusicological work with more than 200 musicians have given birth to a ten-album box set and an 84-page booklet, which resuscitates a music that accompanies the major Maghrebi ceremonies of life.

The result might be occasionally challenging for the general listener, but the 69 songs resound with sincerity and professionalism. Belting out fast-paced vocals, they also plunge listeners into the stark yet rich lives of anonymous rural men and women (especially) in the yesteryears of the late 19th century. These are usually accompanied by the eerie sounds produced by the megroune (double flute), softened by the loutar (a plucked string instrument). Underlying it all are the emblematic darbuka (drum) patterns and the more unusual sinia, a tea-set plate that has been transformed to create a high-pitched rhythm. The songs' lyrics delve into the hardships of agricultural life and nostalgia for a better past, not dissimilar in intent to the US blues or Cape Verde's melodic saudade. The music brings to life a world of solidarity and social networks often dominated by the womenfolk.

Some singers, such as Hafida El Hasnaouia, a sheikha with a career spanning half a century, have transcended the cultural boundaries of their native regions to conquer the entire nation. On hearing the almost ferocious passion El Hasnaouia puts into ‘Bine Jemäa O'bine T'lat’, it's easy to see why. The sheikha and her husband, Bouchaїb Ben Aguida, combine their voices in searing call- and-response duets guaranteed to send Moroccan audiences into a tizzy.

Tellingly, El Mazned's compilation allies such aїta institutions with the latest generations of masters such as Khadija Margoum and Oueld M'Barek. They show us the way forward with a defiant irreverence that continues to shock some of the urban elite. On the compilation, these newer faces also relay standards imposed by the likes of recently departed Sheikha Zahra Kharbouâa and Shioukh MarÉchal Kibbou, mixing the profane and the sacred sometimes in an archaic slang that even Moroccans struggle to follow. Margoum's beguiling vocals on ‘Taläa l'Darou’ signals the enduring power of the oral transmission she inherited from generations before her.

As a result, this compilation takes us on a gritty yet fascinating voyage into the best-hidden corners of the kingdom. Sixty years ago, Paul Bowles spent six months crisscrossing the country for his Music of Morocco compilation featuring field recordings in broad homage to the country's musical variety. El Mazned spent four times longer amplifying its hidden nuggets in the state-of-the-art Studio Hiba in Casablanca. Yet this box set retains the vital essence, from the sand of the Sahara to the salty waters of the Mediterranean. The aїta traditions are essentially maintained thanks to the weddings, funerals, rites of passage and moussem (festivals) that bring together communities in a way no other musical form quite matches.