Avuncular American

Morocco's Music: Archives to Archnet

His Majesty King Mohammed VI

Paul Bowles Library of Congress

Moroccan Music Collection

Tangier American Legation

Institute for Moroccan Studies

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It was the only way I could think of to get the opus of Morocco's traditional music, recorded in 1959 by Paul Bowles and digitized by TALIM in 2010, into the hands of King Mohammed VI: have a leather presentation case made, embossed with the TALIM logo and dedicated to His Majesty.

US Ambassador to Morocco Dwight Bush now has it, and will present it at an appropriate occasion.  Morocco's musical heritage will have been repatriated after more than fifty years in the vaults of the Library of Congress.

We hope that this will spur the Moroccan Ministry of Culture to action, so that this music - 250 selections from all across Morocco, what Paul Bowles called "as diversified a body of music as one could find in any land west of India" - can get into the hands of Moroccans who treasure their musical heritage.

In the meantime, another avenue for the dissemination of the Bowles Moroccan music collection is being prepared by the Aga Khan Documentation Center in the MIT Libraries, which will make the files available in Archnet

a globally-accessible, scholarly resource focused on architecture, urbanism, environmental and landscape design, visual culture, and conservation issues in Muslim societies.

Archnet is an initiative of the Aga Khan Trust for Culture and the Aga Khan Documentation Center at MIT..  While there are still certain technical details to be ironed out before the Bowles collection is online accessible, we are thrilled that soon scholars and traditional music enthusiasts worldwide will be able to listen to the entire 72 hours of music.

Archnet already has a Legation page, and we are also working with them to make another rich archive accessible, once it's fully digitized: the TALIM glass negative collection from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, about which we have written on TALIMblog and part of which is now displayed in our museum.

So, researchers eager to see the pictures or listen to the music: hold your horses, please be patient, and we'll be sure to let you know when you can access the collections online.  In the meantime, do check out what Archnet already has in its extensive collections.

Gerald Loftus

Tangier Seen Through Different Lenses

Is Tangier still the haven of The Aesthetes, as Andrew O'Hagen of the NY Times Magazine would like us to believe?

Much as many of the individuals depicted in "The Aesthetes" are talented and likeable people, and in many ways represent the concentration of culture and creativity that has typified Tangier for decades, there is nevertheless a ring of the recycled in Mr. O'Hagen's piece.

"It’s an old story — as old as sailing and sex..." so begins this umpteenth ode to Tangier's collection of expatriates.  At least we have O'Hagen's fine writing, and nice photography of what are quintessentially cozy interiors, rich in color and light.

But we've read this before, in fact, writers have been churning this out for decades, The Lost World of Naughty Tangier.  Get a new story line, please.

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Le Parisien's recent travel piece gives a plug to the Legation, and it is nicely illustrated with drawings by Reno Marca (though they depict a building other than ours).  This is straightforward travel writing.

TV5 Canada's "Ports d'Attache" episode on Tangier can be seen through 29 April.  Though aficionados will recognize scenes shot at the Legation, we don't get mentioned as such.  The program (in French) is nevertheless well done, and shows Tangier, warts and all, as it is today.

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Perhaps Tangier is simply a good place to do research for budding US scholars, of the likes of Ayla Amon (George Washington University), Graham Cornwell (Georgetown U.), and Emily Albrecht (Dartmouth College), who have recently written about their experiences at the Legation.

So over to our young Americans.

Ayla Amon, former TALIM intern, has done double duty, first by writing a comprehensive piece on the Legation and its library and museum collections in the art and architecture blog Stambouline, and then with Graham Cornwell (who did research for his dissertation at TALIM), a podcast in "Tajine."

Amon and Cornwell discuss the challenges of maintaining the TALIM collection, and present the myriad opportunities for scholars which our holdings represent.  This is very helpful for people contemplating research in Morocco.

Finally, Emily Albrecht reports on her Dartmouth group's time at TALIM, where they were able to attend our anniversary lecture on Sultan Mohammed V's historic speech in Tangier in 1947.

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There's room for every kind of coverage of Tangier, and while we like exposure for this city and for our unique institution, it's gratifying that of the recent articles devoted to Tangier, those with the most depth come from our young scholars.

Gerald Loftus; photo of Legation door detail by Christiane Delongueville

Do You Receive Me? Reception Theory

In another of our continuing series of programs with Tangier's King Fahd School of Translation (part of Abdelmalek Essaadi University), TALIM hosted a full house of students in the communications master's program.

The topic was reception theory.

Now, your correspondent may be a practitioner of communication - blogging, public speaking, media interviews - but I had never before come across reception theory.

Perhaps it is best summed up by a couple of cartoons, possibly by students trying to cut their way through dense theory.  First by Doyinsola, then by Vi Paravane.  Be sure to come back to this blog!

For me, since most of the presentations were in Modern Standard Arabic, I enjoyed the capsule summaries provided by Prof. Tayib Boutbouqalt, sitting next to me.  Especially his take on the students in his program, probably a good third of whom would be known in the US as "continuing education," "non-traditional," or "mature" students.  According to Dr. Boutbouqalt, this is a very recent phenomenon in Morocco, which is to be lauded for including professionals in the mix of these graduate classes.

Yesterday's group, for example, included several working journalists and practitioners of corporate communication.  One of the mature students even did a stint as a political prisoner in the days when Morocco had a number of people who paid the price for nonconformity.  Now this person is a civil servant, practicing his journalism in the cause of his country - and taking classes in things like reception theory.

Okay, back to RT.  Reception theory, in case you didn't look at the cartoons, is the study of how messages are understood differently by people with different backgrounds.  You can see a whole bunch of slides on RT by clicking here.

After a wide range of presentations from different schools of thought and linguistic sources, the students engaged in some Q & A.  One question - unanswered - was how reception theory has fared in these days of Facebook, Twitter, etc.  I have a feeling - simply from the average age of much work done on RT, as seen in these JSTOR search results - that the field may have had its heyday in the pre-internet 1980s.

But then, what do I know?  Did you receive me? Over and out.

Gerald Loftus

Arab & US Communicators in Tangier

"AUSACE, the Arab-U.S. Association for Communication Educators was established in 1995 to encourage and support the advancement of professional relationships among Arab and U.S. university faculty and students and media professionals."

AUSACE 2013 has convened in Tangier, and the launch was last night at the Legation.  Thanks to our fruitful partnership with the sponsor, Tangier's King Fahd Advanced School of Translation, we hosted communications educators and practictioners from the Arab world, Europe, and the U.S.

Going beyond the inevitable "Arab Spring" analysis, the participants are devoting the week to discussing everything from "hacktivism" to "translation in wartime."  Workshops in participatory democracy and journalism in times of crisis give a practical tilt to what might have otherwise seemed an exercise in paper-presentation.

From the conference rationale, under the theme of "New Horizons of Communication in a Time of Crisis," some key questions:

• Is it possible to think of communication differently so as to be able to better decipher the crisis phenomena and curb them?
• What is the share of responsibility of the professionals from all fields of media, irrespective of their specialization, in the malfunctioning of intercultural communication systems on the global level?
• Along the continuum between the two extremes; collective commitment and individual responsibility, where does freedom of expression fall, liberty begin and auto-censorship end?
• How can we protect reality against the technological manipulation of facts? What would be the appropriate pedagogical approach to adopt for training our novice journalists and communicators?
• What is the impact of crisis on cross-cultural and cross-religious dialogues?  Are there any links between Occupy Wall Street (OWS), Indignados and the Arab Spring?

Some of the conference participants were return visitors to the Legation, but for most, it was a chance to discover TALIM and to add it to their list of "musts" for follow up research (many were captivated, not only by the building and the museum, but by our library).

For TALIM, welcoming the AUSACE participants was a chance not only to introduce the Legation and the various facets of TALIM, but to highlight our core theme of communication between Americans and Moroccans from the outset of the US in the 1770s.

Gerald Loftus

The Moroccan Network in America

The visit to the Legation by the Honorary Consuls of Morocco in the United States sparked some thought about the considerable presence of this North African country in the US.  With honorary consuls in nine states, from Hawaii to Massachusetts, Morocco extends its reach beyond its Embassy in Washington and its Consulate and UN Mission in New York.

Hailing from sectors as diverse as academia, business, and public affairs, these Americans representing Morocco were a particularly focused audience for the Legation's story of more than two centuries of close relations between Morocco and the US.  Bravo to the Moroccan Embassy in Washington for bringing them to TALIM.

Morocco's network of institutions is wide and diverse.  In Washington, "Morocco On the Move" - a public affairs portal - is an initiative of the Moroccan American Center

a group of three NGOs – The Moroccan American Center for Policy, The Moroccan American Trade and Investment Center, and The Moroccan American Cultural Center – which work to promote relations and mutual understanding between the United States and Morocco.

TALIM has been a recipient of a grant from the MACC to mount its forthcoming permanent exhibit of "Moroccans in America," a nice counterpoint to our longtime interest in documenting the contribution of Tangier Americans to the cultural life of this city.  Shortly there will be Moroccan-Americans on our walls, whose contributions to American life range from academia to outer space.

Speaking of Moroccan-Americans, a plethora of associations show the verve of this growing community: AMPA, representing professionals in various fields; Moroccan American Network, celebrating entrepreneurs; Wafin, a sort of webzine where Moroccan-Americans can meet each other and keep up with the news from home; and local associations, like Boston's Moroccan American Cultural & Community Center, whose members are so proud they've designed a button.

Morocco's formal and informal networks in the United States are a clear illustration of a country that has figured out that, important as diplomacy is, it's not sufficient to check the box of embassy contacts with the State Department's Morocco Desk.  Morocco is active within and beyond the Beltway - all the way to Honolulu.

Gerald Loftus

a group of three NGOs – The Moroccan American Center for Policy, The Moroccan American Trade and Investment Center, and The Moroccan American Cultural Center – which work to promote relations and mutual understanding between the United States and Morocco. - See more at: http://moroccoonthemove.com/about-us/#sthash.sm0pXLwv.dpuf

the Moroccan American Center, a group of three NGOs – The Moroccan American Center for Policy, The Moroccan American Trade and Investment Center, and The Moroccan American Cultural Center – which work to promote relations and mutual understanding between the United States and Morocco. - See more at: http://moroccoonthemove.com/about-us/#sthash.sm0pXLwv.dpuf

of the Moroccan American Center, a group of three NGOs – The Moroccan American Center for Policy, The Moroccan American Trade and Investment Center, and The Moroccan American Cultural Center – which work to promote relations and mutual understanding between the United States and Morocco - See more at: http://moroccoonthemove.com/about-us/#sthash.sm0pXLwv.dpuf

of the Moroccan American Center, a group of three NGOs – The Moroccan American Center for Policy, The Moroccan American Trade and Investment Center, and The Moroccan American Cultural Center – which work to promote relations and mutual understanding between the United States and Morocco - See more at: http://moroccoonthemove.com/about-us/#sthash.sm0pXLwv.dpuf

of the Moroccan American Center, a group of three NGOs – The Moroccan American Center for Policy, The Moroccan American Trade and Investment Center, and The Moroccan American Cultural Center – which work to promote relations and mutual understanding between the United States and Morocco - See more at: http://moroccoonthemove.com/about-us/#sthash.sm0pXLwv.dpuf

of the Moroccan American Center, a group of three NGOs – The Moroccan American Center for Policy, The Moroccan American Trade and Investment Center, and The Moroccan American Cultural Center – which work to promote relations and mutual understanding between the United States and Morocco - See more at: http://moroccoonthemove.com/about-us/#sthash.sm0pXLwv.dpuf

Moroccans Got Rhythm?

"Arabs Got Talent," the Arabic-language show on MBC-TV, recently featured a Moroccan break dance group that definitely has talent, combining kinetic choreography of scenes reminiscent of Marrakesh's famous Jamaa El Fnaa and moves that would make Michael Jackson proud.  Morocco has its "break dance battles" too.

"Movement is a language," according to AIMS researcher Karima Abidine of Northwestern University, whose presentation yesterday at TALIM covered "Talk From the Body: Contemporary Dance and the Negotiation of Social Change in Urban Morocco."  What the audience lacked in quantity we made up for in quality; we had several people involved in performance and dance, including Leila Chellabi, author, lecturer, and jazz and classical dancer, and Natasha Pradhan, researcher in Moroccan music and performance from Brown University.

Karima Abidine showed us several clips of televised performances, but for most young Moroccan contemporary dancers, space is at a premium.  Modern dance, especially for young women, is caught up in a number of cultural taboos, making it more of a male domain.  And even for the young men, much of Moroccan modern dance is an outgrowth of athletics, acrobatics, and of course break dancing.

In Tangier, groups like Darna and shows like Chouf Ouchouf and Taoub have built on this acrobatic tradition, performing pageants depicting Tangier's long history, and using site-specific performance to link with the city's past.

But as Karima Abidine points out, much of what is performed is for Western audiences, whether resident expats or while on tour outside Morocco.  Moroccan publics might, as one audience member witnessed, smile on their daughters miming Rihanna during a recent appearance at the Mawazine Festival, but would never countenance them appearing on stage to dance in front of non-family members.  Dance, for many, is "elite," and in any case, "non-Moroccan."

Dance, Karima Abidine believes, "pushes boundaries, in order to collapse them."  Within the regional context of both the Arab Spring and the increasingly prevalent currents of religious conservatism, dancers are challenged on a number of fronts.  All this in an atmosphere of few resources, other than aid from largely European sources, devoted to dance.  The recent Morocco tour of Chicago's Hubbard Street Dance group gave a number of young dancers a taste of what they rarely have a chance to get - professional training.

Our thanks to Karima Abidine - and YouTube - for giving us a glimpse into the world of Moroccan dance.

Gerald Loftus

Performing the Political in Tangier...

... is not a party political manifesto; rather it is the subtitle of the annual "Performing Tangier" academic conference this year: "Enacting a New Urban: Performing the Political in Tangier."

We are partners with conference organizers ICPS, the International Center for Performance Studies, and disseminate their Call for Papers (CFP) below.  For generalist readers put off by the vocabulary of the performance studies discipline, suffice it to say that the gathering is composed of scholars and practicioners from a wide swath of performance world, stress on world.  It is truly international, and ICPS President Dr. Khalid Amine of Tangier deserves recognition for his ability to carry this off for the better part of a decade.

And it's not all just dry academia: check out that fire-eater in the poster!  TALIM and ICPS collaborated last year in a knockout performance by American actress Dorothy Weems, illustrating what the academics call "site-specific performance."  We again hope to use our historic building - and the two centuries worth of human stories contained in it - to showcase how performance can illustrate history.

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Call for Papers:

“Enacting a new urban: performing the political in Tangier”
1-3 June 2013, Tangier, Morocco

This session aims to explore some of the new urban spatialities created by Tangier’s emergent performative politics. Inspired by Judith Butler’s (1993: 2) understanding of performativity, we would especially like to draw attention here to ‘‘the re-iterative and citational practices by which [political] discourse produces the effects that it names’’ and in particular, the variety of performative practices and (re)enactments that are today challenging pre-existing socio-spatial categories and boundaries in and around the city. Many of these (re)enactments draw upon (and at once make possible) a far-reaching re-scaling of politics, economics and governance taking place in and around Tangier today – but also novel ways of subverting these same through recitation, reiteration and resignification.

We invite papers that focus on such new political and geopolitical ‘stories’ and their accordant (re)enactments of urban spaces and identities, and seek contributions that engage with topics including, but not limited to, the following themes:

• Performing/promoting Tangier as an urban commodity

• The performance of new property regimes and the creation of new spaces of ‘economic exception’

• The border and/in the city

• Fractioned spaces/fractioned mobilities

• New urban identities

• Performing the ‘espace du détroit': new cross-border imaginations

Please forward expressions of interest and paper proposals/abstracts to:

Dr. Luiza Bialasiewicz
[email protected]
Department of European Studies, University of Amsterdam (brief bio below)


Please note that we will require the following from all presenters: title, abstract (250 word  max)and a brief bio (one paragraph max). BY JANUARY 31, 2013

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This panel is part of the 9th annual Tangier International Conference,
“Performance in/and the Public Sphere”,  June 1 - 3, 2013, Tangier, Morocco

Full conference info and full CFP (with additional panels) at:
http://collaborativemedia.blogspot.com/2012/09/cfp-performing-tangier-2013.html

Hosted by the International Centre for Performance Studies (ICPS) Tangier
http://icpsmorocco.org/new/

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Luiza Bialasiewicz is Associate Professor in the Department of European Studies at the University of Amsterdam. Before moving to the Netherlands in 2011, she was Senior Lecturer in Political Geography at Royal Holloway, University of London and, prior, Lecturer in Geography at Durham University.

Her work focuses on the political geographies of European integration and on European borders, with a particular focus on the ‘geographical imaginations’ of European belonging, within and beyond the territorial confines of Europe. Her current research focuses on EU border management and EU geopolitics, looking specifically at the role of third states in the 'out-sourcing' of EU border controls in the Mediterranean, and her most recent book is the edited collection Europe in the World: EU Geopolitics and the Making of European Space,
published by Ashgate in its Critical Geopolitics series.

--
Partners for International Collaboration and Education (PICE)

George F Roberson, PhD, Chair
Dept of Geosciences, Geography Human Dimensions Research, Univ of
Massachusetts-Amherst

Amherst, Denver, Tangier:
http://interactive-worlds.blogspot.com/2007/12/welcome.html

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Radio Medi 1 Across the Maghreb

Though its studios are in a pleasant old villa in central Tangier, Medi 1's antenna farm in Nador, near the Moroccan-Algerian border, points east (photo, right).  Medi 1 is shorthand for Radio Maghreb International, and its broadcasts in Arabic and French cover a wide audience all across North Africa.

With US presidential elections only weeks away, yesterday's monthly "La Question de l'Heure" program focused on the role of US foreign policy in the 2012 elections, especially prospects for US policy in the Middle East and North Africa.

Host Cyrille Arnoux welcomed American studies Professor Anne Deysine of the University of Paris Nanterre (Paris X) and TALIM director Loftus for a one-hour discussion touching on the respective positions of the candidates on regional policy.  Discussion in the studio was augmented by reports from Medi 1 correspondents in Washington, Jerusalem, and Ramallah.

Medi 1, a commercial Franco-Moroccan radio (and TV) operation founded in 1980, has an impressive editorial team in Tangier, plus a wide range of correspondents or stringers in major capitals in Europe, North America, the Middle East and North Africa.  With its audience of up to 25 million listeners across the Maghreb and Mediterranean Europe, Medi 1 is an important media outlet for the Maghreb.  We were happy to be invited.

You can listen to the 50-minute podcast by clicking here.

Anne Deysine & Gerald Loftus at TALIM

Gerald Loftus