Avuncular American

Tribute to Paul Bowles In Tangier

After 5 days of readings, exhibits, concerts, and walkabouts, Tangier's week in Homage to Paul Bowles has come to an end.

Though most of the events were attended largely by a strongly European cultural crowd, it started and ended with programs well-attended by young Moroccans.

"Every Reader Is a Translator," held at the Tangier School of Translation, had a capacity crowd of students, many of whom asked very pertinent questions of the panel of eminent translators of Paul Bowles works (Claude Nathalie Thomas into French, Nicole d'Amonville Alegria, Spanish).  As panelist Umberto Pasti said, Bowles - with his knowledge of French, Spanish, and Moroccan Arabic - was the antithesis of the Orientalist. Translating his works required so much more than finding le mot juste; you had to know the back story.  What was the character's mind set, what does Bowles want to infer?  Claude Nathalie Thomas wrote about her work with Bowles in this intriguing essay, "A Translator's Experience."

And on closing night, Tangier's wonderful Cinémathèque featured the first public showing of a work-in-progress, Karim Debbagh's "Creating a Legend." Bowles stalwarts might flinch at this often critical look at the local legend, which is heavy on the writer's last days, and doesn't pretend to be literary.  Its merit is showing the sometimes fraught relationship with the Moroccans closest to Bowles, though the viewer is left with the queasy feeling that they are capitalizing on their former connections to the great man.  Again, the Cinémathèque cornered the youth market.

In between, Tangier was treated to a world-class reading of a Bowles short story in French translation ("L'education de Malika"), a concert of his Spanish songs, and TALIM's showcasing of his recordings of Moroccan traditional music for the Library of Congress.  Interspersed with book signings and theater productions.  Paul Bowles was prolific, and his talents many.

Seeing several documentaries on his long life in Tangier, interviews where Bowles speaks for himself, and listening to his narration of his stories and his music wafting over the Legation courtyard, I have a much better sense of this unique 20th century figure.  I come out of Centenary Week with great respect for this Renaissance Man, this American in Tangier.

Gerald Loftus

Spotlight on Paul Bowles, Musicologist

There's excitement in the air.  In Tangier this week, an ad hoc group of cultural institutions - Moroccan, French, Spanish, and American (us), plus some very dynamic individuals on the cultural scene - is marking the Centenary of the birth of Paul Bowles with a great variety of events (Download TALIM Paul Bowles Centenary brochure).

Usually PB is described as an "American writer who lived in Tangier," and only aficionados know that he was a composer before he became an author.  But very few people know about his service as a roving musicologist for the Library of Congress (here's the LoC's summary).

In 1959, Paul Bowles received a grant to record traditional Moroccan music for the Library of Congress.  He crisscrossed the country in a VW Beetle, loaded with recording equipment and a team of three.  The result is 70 reel-to-reel tapes, considered the definitive collection of Moroccan traditional music.  As Bowles wrote in Their Heads Are Green ("The Rif, To Music")

My stint, in attempting to record the music of Morocco, was to capture in the space of the six months which the Rockefeller Foundation allotted me for the project, examples of every major musical genre to be found within the boundaries of the country... By [December 1959]... I already had more than two hundred and fifty selections... as diversified a body of music as one could find in any land west of India.

Until now, only researchers with the means to get to Washington D.C. have had access to this music.  In 2010, the year of the Centenary of Paul Bowles’ birth, the music that he recorded a half-century ago is being “repatriated” to Morocco.

Thanks to a grant from the U.S. Embassy Rabat Public Affairs Office, and to funds raised by the Wilaya of Tangierand the Moroccan Ministry of Culture, the Tangier American Legation Institute for Moroccan Studies – TALIM –  has commissioned the digitization of the Bowles Collection.  Now Moroccans, Americans, and the rest of the world will have access to this unique cultural heritage.

We are rightly proud of this effort, and are pleased to expand the Legation Museum's "Bowles Room" into a Paul Bowles Wing.  The central aspect of the new space is an exhibit of photos, maps, texts and music from his Library of Congress project (photo, above).  If anything illustrates that Bowles wasn't just for alienated expatriates, it's his serious scholarship in helping preserve Morocco's musical heritage.

Gerald Loftus