Posts

Fragments of Greek Mythology in the Amazigh music/poetry

Image
As indigenous peoples of North Africa, Amazigh people have had a long history of interacting with the most prominent Mediterranean civilizations. This cross-cultural effect is illustrated by many incidents. One of them is the famous Greek deity Poseidon who’s –according to Herodotus- is originally North African. This is not something new, for there is not a 100% pure culture because each society - viz its cultural system- is influenced by another one or built on/emerged from the debris of a previous one. In this article, I am not going to focus on all the aspects of this Greeko-Amazigh interculturalism. First of all, because there are many academic studies which have been done by experts on the topic, and also an article of a few pages is not really sufficient to cover all the aspects. In this article however, I will use Amazigh arts (Music/Poetry) to show how the effect of this antic historical interplay transcended time and is still alive in the cultural memory of the Amazigh people.

A TRIBUTE TO THE BLUEBIRD

Image
     On his deathbed he said “As for me, I am indifferent to all of that.. Long live literature! Long live literature!” just *the same way in which he asserted while still young “ There are no more novels, no more poems, there is writing”. He is the prominent Amazigh Moroccan writer Mohamed Khair-Eddine , who has excessively written in French and enchanted the most celebrated minds of his era. The bluebird fluttered in the libraries of Choukri, Sartre and Senghor , and about the supreme absurdist Bickett . They all appreciated the vituperative spirit of his literature and the agitative aura of his bitter ire and oneirics. He was born in an Amazigh town called Tafraout in southern Morocco . His family left the countryside and moved to Casablanca city. Few years later, his father divorced his mother and married a younger woman. This incident dehydrated  the heavenly childish meadows within him, and its dry and scary aroma continued to reign over his works. It also explains his wistf

The Knight and the Poet

Image
   " Azellal d Urkkab " or "A debate between a Knight and a Poet" is an ancient Amazigh song by Rais Boubkr Anchad. He has succeeded in embodying the eternal conflict between the poet and the conventional man (or in using Plato’s cave allegory: Between an intellectual and ordinary caveman). The former observes the world from a celestial, rather than an ideal perspective. He is entranced by his reveries, he wonders and observes the universe with ardour and exultation. The poet is a person whose soul can be satiated by the exquisiteness of the cosmos, and is ardent enough to tread the labyrinths of satyr and consecrated passion. He sees in the daily occupations and delights of the ordinary people an odious fetter, and thus he is always chary of being overtaken by public opinion. A conventional man, however, is induced at a young age by society to believe that success lies in imitating and obeying, in servitude and in monotony. He yields to the social project of turn

A king with horns (Translated Amazigh tale)

Image
Once upon the time lived a beautiful girl with her brother. They were poor orphans and only had a herd of goats and a modest house in an isolated tribe which they inherited from their dead parents. The girl used to take care of the house while her brother was grazing in the forest. Tuda was breathtakingly beautiful and one day as she was bathing by the river, someone kidnapped her and sold her to the king.  The latter got spellbound by her beauty and fell in Love with her. He spoiled her and she became his queen. Nevertheless, Tuda could never forget about her brother and neither did he.  He went on a quest to find her, and from tribe the other,  he played his flute knowing that his sister would recognize his special melodies and so happened. Tuda, the queen, heard that familiar sound outside of her castle and knew it was her brother. She welcomed  and celebrated him, and she also suggested that he stay with her. Yet, he rejected it as he is not used to this lifestyle and he knew he w