May 2: Guest Blogger Carl Lee #14: In the (Arabic) House

The 14th in a series of posts from Carl Lee.

In The (Arabic) House

A couple years back I found myself kicking back in the rooftop garden of a Marrakech riad. It was within earshot of Jemaa el-Fnaa. 

It was the afternoon and the smoky chaos that unfolds as the sun sets on Marrakech’s main square within the walled old city had not yet begun. On the riad’s sound system - on low volume but gently persistent - a culturally appropriate journey unfolded, a compilation of Arabic house music. 

With the snow-capped Atlas Mountains off in the distance and just visible through the forest of palms, telephone masts, minarets and heat-haze, Arabic house music hit an hypnotic spot. 

It certainly wouldn’t have been anything like what I was listening to when, in 1980 aged 18, I first visited Marrakech.  It wasn’t Crosby, Still’s & Nash’s 1969 hippie anthem ‘Marrakesh Express’ but Bob Marley and the Wailers new album ‘Uprising’ that had been released a month earlier, so more of a ‘Zion Train’.

Not a huge amount has changed in Marrakech’s walled Medina over the years; it is a UNESCO World Heritage site. Inside the monumental city walls the stunningly beautiful Koutoubiya Mosque overlooks the maze of covered allies, sudden sun-lit squares and walled gardens. 

Yet nearly half a century on there are far better restaurants, cafes and riads but also the lasting visible damage of the 2023 Al Haouz earthquake; tumbled down houses, minarets supported by scaffolding and cracking stretched across many an ancient wall.

But what was this Arabic house music? 

Signs of earthquake damage.

Shazam wasn’t up to telling me, and as the day progressed I forgot to ask at the riad’s reception. The moment passed.

And as the holiday passed snippets of similar sounds floated past me in the background at restaurants, from boom boxes in the street and in the chic cafes of the new city. Arabic house was clearly ‘a thing’ in Marrakech. 

I’d started exploring Arabic influenced music decades back; probably first piqued by the Lebanese singer Dunya Yusin’s voice on Eno and Byrne’s 1981 ‘My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts’. 

This really resonated with me fresh of the back off a month in North Africa. Then there was Jah Wobble, Natasha Atlas, Omar Faruk Tekbilek (although he was from Istanbul, Turkey) and Page and Plant’s excursions with a full Egyptian orchestra layering an Arabic sway across Led Zeppelin classics, the

album of which, ‘ No Quarter’ (1994), was recorded partly in Marrakech. 

I even had a WOMAD inspired Algerian Rai phase and shook my booty to DJ Monkey Pilot and his Whirl-Y-Gig sound system (I’ve still got one of their t-shirts). But that was all more than a couple of decades back and so this smooth Arabic house defined by its use of some traditional Arabic music stylings and instrumentation, and added to a dose of the Balearics that was clearly rooted in the streets of North Africa, became the impetus for me to see what was out there, and what that compilation was.

A key aspect of Arabic music is that it crosses over a huge geographical area stretching from the clubs of Dubai to those of Casablanca and within that are regional differences drawing upon an area’s traditional music. Fortunately musicologists have mapped out the traditional sounds of just about everywhere but not necessarily what is new and bouncing in cafes and on folks’ phones. 

In the case of Morocco, the American Sadie Van Vranken has produced a detailed historical, social and cultural exploration of traditional Moroccan music styles. 

And of course somebody out there has also put up a whole blog on ‘The evolution of House Music in Morocco’, after all why wouldn’t they. 

Hats off to Rave Club Morocco Collective who are a one-stop shop, vertically integrated operation

dealing with everything from artist management and recording to party organising.

In Morocco a key source of inspiration has been the blend of Sub-Saharan African, Berber and Arabic influences such as Gnawa music, a traditional genre that has been elevated to being of UNESCO intangible cultural heritage importance. 

Gnawa is famed for its live performance, which are often trance-like with the invocation of spirits and obviously drawing on traditions beyond Morocco’s predominantly Islamic culture. In Essaouira on the Moroccan Atlantic coast an annual Gnawa festival is held with leading artists such as Asmaa Hamzaoui performing both traditional Gnawa with its focus on the guembri, a camel-skin covered bass lute and qraqab, large metal castanets. Most evenings in Jemaa el-Fnaa several groups are playing Gnawa and that imbues the square with its evocative soundtrack whilst hungry locals eat, snake charmers charm, hustlers hustle and camels and tourists idle past.

Another side of Marrakech is to be found outside the walls of the medina; modern Marrakech with its wide boulevards, chic 5 star hotels and night clubs where the beautiful people party and leading the party today is Amine K, Marrakech resident, international DJ and perhaps the highest profile Arabic

House DJ around. 

He has quite a distinct vibe, clearly ticking all the house music boxes but layered across it is a distinct Moroccan feeling created by dipping into the countries traditional Gnawa, Chaabi and Berber sounds.

After a fair bit of musical exploring I have come to the conclusion that the elusive house mix that my riad was playing, or something incredibly similar to it, is probably one of Café De Anatolia’s Arabic house mixes. There are plenty of these mixes on YouTube to choose from and they often come accompanied with some rather dramatic drone footage of Arabic landscapes from deserts to bustling

towns. Even if it isn’t one of these mixes they do take me right back to the frenetic bustle of Jemaa el Fnaa, the narrow lanes of Marrakech’s medina, the chic cafés of the new city, piercing sunlight and the lofty peaks of the high Atlas Mountain in the distance.

Carl Lee is retired but was a lecturer at The University of Sheffield and Sheffield Hallam University, taught A level Geography for 20 years at Sheffield College, is the author of five books about geography and has a PhD in economic geography. He has been nuts about music since buying his first single in 1973: 10cc’s 'Rubber Bullets' if you were wondering.

All images courtesy of Carl Lee.