Abstract
This chapter describes how the Moroccan state uses cultural diplomacy to promote their rich cultural heritage and censor the discontent. In a discussion of the international performance of “Morocco” as presented by the Moroccan state, I analyze how the tensions arising out of that performance are grappled by Moroccans in Morocco. This chapter examines the contemporary underground social world of industrial techno music that Moroccan youth are creating for themselves and its potential as a zone of political action and social change. This chapter argues that industrial techno musicians and their communities are non-state actors that present a view of Morocco that complicates the state’s presentation of itself as largely Arab, folkloric and classical. Through an analysis of electronic music produced in Morocco that is not endorsed by the state, and ethnographic material obtained by interview and participant-observation research conducted between 2018 and 2023, this chapter demonstrates how artists in Morocco are composing and producing music that exemplifies the pains and boundaries that Moroccans experience in their everyday lives and how performing it at underground techno parties has created a community of listeners and participants who have cohesive, alternative understandings of Moroccan society that resist the state’s objectives.
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Notes
- 1.
Ann Cvetkovich defines the experience of feeling ‘stuck’ or in a moment of stasis as “Impasse” (2012). She describes this state as an ‘experience of everyday life when we don’t know what to do. In addition, […] it is related to the category of spiritual crisis as well, those moments when a system of belief or belonging loses meaning and faith is in question’ (2012: 21).
- 2.
To describe a few: the Fes Festival of World Sacred Music highlights Morocco’s acceptance of religious diversity; the Gnaoua World Music Festival celebrates the presence of the Gnawa people in Morocco; Visa for Music: Africa Middle East Music Meeting highlights African and Middle Eastern musicians who have yet to emerge onto the international scene; and Atlas Electronic celebrates musicians from Africa and African diasporas.
- 3.
Electronic music communities are close-knit collectives, also known as “scenes”, and consist of musicians, artists, dancers, and music appreciators. A scene can be thought of as a group or collective filled with individuals and subgroups who each join the scene for a wide variety of reasons (Císař and Koubek 2012). Some participants in electronic music scenes are there for political representation. Others are there for the music, dancing, or just to party. Each scene is identified by the music, and the people within the scene have this musical identity as their primary cohesive factor (Baulch 2007). Other intersectional factors, such as lifestyle, sexuality, gender, ethnicity, and nationality, however, still play the role of subtext in this greater ecology because of the influence that such subtexts can have on the different ways that people can identify with music. Nevertheless, the music is the cohesive factor that binds the scene and the way people move throughout it.
- 4.
According to the World Population Review, “Morocco is a demographically young country with 27% of its population under the age of 15, 18% between the ages of 15 and 24, 42% between 25 and 54 years old, 7% between the ages of 55 and 64 and just 6% 65 years and older. The median age of Moroccans is just 29 years old as of 2018, with a life expectancy of 77.1 years of age” (World Population Review 2022).
- 5.
In this chapter, I use the term “subcultural” to refer to queer communities that are both countercultural to the state’s objectives and that implement subcultural imagery in their performances, such as the use of leather, BDSM, and violence.
- 6.
The Moroccan Artist Card is a document issued by the Moroccan government that allows artists to apply for travel visas with more ease.
- 7.
I use the term “Oriental” because my interlocutors have referred to this music as such.
- 8.
I recognize the shift from Middle East and North Africa (MENA) to Southwest Asia and North Africa (SWANA) as one that has moved from an ethnic categorization to a geographic categorization. The term “Arab world”, however, is still used colloquially to refer to the SWANA region, as well as academically to discuss the ethno-linguistic region. Although many of my interlocutors do not identify as “Arab”, they still refer to North Africa as part of the “Arab world”.
- 9.
All names of interlocutors, artist monikers, events, and venues have been changed for anonymity.
- 10.
According to an interlocutor who owns a small business, registering a business costs between 1500–2000 MAD.
- 11.
The genre “Noise” is capitalized as per Paul Hegarty’s (2007) use of the term, differentiating it from the more general sonic “noise”.
- 12.
Laudan Nooshin’s edited volume, Music and the Play of Power in the Middle East, North Africa, and Central Asia (2009), outlines how powerful music can be in uniting individuals and communities and thus how threatening music can be for the nation-state. As such, the authors in this volume also discuss how musicians and individuals navigate the state’s objectives through their musical endeavours.
- 13.
In electronic music culture, pieces of music are referred to as “tracks”.
- 14.
On the topic of navigating public and private spaces in the Islamic world, Asma Afsaruddin’s edited volume, Hermeneutics and Honor: Negotiating Female “Public Space in islamic/ate Societies (1999) argues that the dichotomy of public and private space must be situated into the local context and temporality; Charles Hirschkind writes about the ethics of navigating public and private space through the spread of cassette sermons in Egypt in The Ethical Soundscape: Cassette Sermons and Islamic Counterpublics (2006); and Karin van Nieuwkerk analyzes the discourse surrounding the ‘pious turn’ of 1980s and 1990s Egypt in “Debating Piety and Performing Arts in the Public Sphere: The ‘Caravan’ of Veiled Actresses in Egypt” (2014).
- 15.
William Bogard (2007) writes about how haptic power expands and contracts like the coils of a snake, like an object that slides through the expanding and contracting grips of one’s hands. Haptic power thus takes place on the ground, horizontally, moving throughout the streets of a given society, as opposed to panoptic power, which is imposed from above. Laura Marks (2015) writes about haptic power in art, illuminating how paintings on ceramic sculptures represent horizontal, haptic movement. The painting thus appears to be moving even though it is fixed on the ceramic object. As such, although it cannot necessarily be seen, haptic power is imposed horizontally.
- 16.
Susan Ossman’s book, Picturing Casablanca: Portraits of Power in a Modern City (1994), references the visual imagery that represents power in Morocco through a critique of billboards in Casablanca.
- 17.
The nouvelle ville translates to the “new city” and refers to the French colonial city center. The “new city” is in opposition to the “ancienne medina”, referring to the traditional, old city.
- 18.
Although in this case it is not applied to a member of a diaspora, rather members of citizens who are in their place of origin, when behavior in public and private spheres does not match because one is trying to assimilate to the public environment, this can be described as ‘politesse,’ a word used by Rapport (2012) to describe the process of restraining one’s performance of ethnicity or reactions to problematic situations, ‘politely.’ In Anyone: The Cosmopolitan Subject of Anthropology (2012) Rapport explains that the diasporic, cosmopolitan subject has to adhere to a collective identity—for the sake of etiquette—as a way for individuals to survive through assimilation. The cosmopolitan individual, he argues, uses critical thought to create and understand ideas and worldviews that are not necessarily aligned with their own collective group. It is because they require a public identity that they perform politesse as such. One cannot simply assimilate and ‘become like you,’ but they can use politesse to ‘fit in.’
- 19.
- 20.
- 21.
Gnawa music receives performance attention that appears to be a celebration of their culture and presence in Morocco but is thought of by many instead to be a form of government reconciliation. Furthermore, Sub-Saharan migrants who are not Gnawa-identified continue to face adversity in Morocco today.
- 22.
Psytrance is a genre with a fast bpm ranging from 140 to over 200 bpm.
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Fulton-Melanson, J. (2024). Arabian Violence: Censorship in Morocco’s Techno Underground. In: Rijo Lopes da Cunha, M.M., Shannon, J., Møller Sørensen, S., Danielson, V. (eds) Music and Cultural Diplomacy in the Middle East. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-36279-8_11
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