Musicalizing Indigeneity:
Tazenzart as a Locus for Amazigh Indigenous Consciousness

Brahim El Guabli
Williams College

Abstract: Amazigh musicians who came of age in the 1970s gave a new meaning to their indigenous music. Their efforts paved the way for musical experimentation through the fusion of local melodies with international musical traditions, the use of imported instruments, and the adaptation of literary poems to music. The Moroccan Association for Research and Cultural Exchange (AMREC) established the band Usmān after its leadership determined that music was crucial for its project to spread Amazigh consciousness among the younger generation of urbanite Imazighen. Accordingly, musical and literary modernization was essential for the linguistic and cultural revitalization that AMREC advocated. I argue that Amazigh music has been the locus where Amazigh indigeneity found its earliest articulations and reclamations since the 1970s. Combining readings of secondary sources with close readings of songs in Tamazight, this article reveals the multilayered ways in which music and sung poetry participated in defining Amazigh indigeneity. In addition to linguistic and cultural marginalization, Amazigh music has foregrounded the “internal colonialism,” which dispossessed Imazighen of their land and natural resources, recontextualizing Imazighen’s experience in Tamazgha—the Amazigh homeland—within a larger, albeit not always explicitly engaged, global indigenous condition. Reading Amazigh indigeneity against the background of other indigeneities, this article both nuances and complicates the notion of indigeneity as it emerged in Amazigh music as well as in the crucial debates that took place among Amazigh activists about tamḷīyt/aṣlāniyya after the 1993 Vienna World Conference on Human Rights.

Keywords: Amazigh music; band Usmān; AMREC; indigeneity; Amazigh poetry.

Amazigh music is a space for both sustaining tradition and spurring innovation. As a feminist domain, music allowed women like Fatima Tabaâmrant to be a part of the public sphere and to participate in highly charged conversations. Music also allowed underrepresented groups, mainly Black Amazighs like El Haj El Mahdi Ben M’bark (d. 2024), to reclaim their share of awāl (speech/discourse) thanks to their mastery of verse and musical compositions. Amazigh music is also a site of multidirectional cultural and linguistic traffic between Imazighen (Amazigh people) living in Tamazgha (the Amazigh homeland extending from the Canary Islands to southwest Egypt) and others in their diaspora.[1] Through  music, Imazighen are able to claim a shared sense of identity that is anchored in their Tamazight indigeneity. In this article, I argue that starting from the 1970s Amazigh music became the locus through which Amazigh indigeneity was reclaimed through musical themes of land and language  even before its reclamation by the Amazigh Cultural Movement (ACM) that began in  1993. Conscious of their subaltern status compared to their Arabic-speaking counterparts, Amazigh musicians musicalized indigeneity. Accordingly, land and language were at the center of Amazigh musicians’ artistic concerns. From Izenzaren in Morocco to Hamid Chriet (Idir) in Algeria, Amazigh bands played a seminal role in disseminating the sense of disempowerment and revolt that stemmed from their disenfranchisement as a result of oppressive state policies that deprived Imazighen of their land and culture.

Scholarship on the role of Amazigh music in articulating Imazighen’s indigeneity is still sparse. Compared to the history and achievements of the ACM, which have garnered much scholarly attention, the role that musical innovation played in articulating Amazigh indigeneity throughout Tamazgha since the mid-1970s remains relatively unexamined. Taking the case of Morocco, this article uses the  notion of Tamazgha to refer to the broader trend of musical hybridization and borrowings that took place throughout the Amazigh homeland, which extends from the Canary Islands to west Egypt. In developing the argument that the modernization of Amazigh music contributed to the conceptualization and dissemination of Amazigh indigeneity, this article brings to light little-known intersections between the ACM’s advocacy on behalf of Tamazgha’s Indigenous people and the effort to keep the musical scene current. This article also  demonstrates that Amazigh musicians who participated in this musical indigenization, instead of claiming indigeneity through a return to a pristine tradition, took the counterintuitive path of modernization so as to assert their roots in the land and engage with the current challenges facing Amazigh societies.

Amazigh Indigeneity has yet to be fleshed out and theorized as it pertains to North Africa or the even larger Tamazgha. Developed as a subversive response to European settler colonialism,  particularly that of North America and the Pacific Islands, the notion of indigeneity unsettles the domination and disempowerment of Native people by colonial settlers and their descendants. The term “Indigeneity” is embedded in long histories of Euro-American racism vis-à-vis Native peoples and their dispossession. As a result of its history, the term has its proponents and detractors. However, as Marisol de Cadena and Orin Stan have written, indigeneity is “a relational field of governance, subjectivities, and knowledges that involve us all—indigenous and nonindigenous—in the making and remaking of its structures of power and imagination.”[2] Rather than assuming a clear-cut, black-or-white position, this definition reminds us that indigeneity is a complex field of mutual implications that encapsulate both Indigenous and non-indigenous people. In Tamazgha, scholars and Amazigh activists are still debating whether the current conceptualization of indigeneity and its theoretical framework applies to Imazighen (Amazigh people).[3]  The word “indigeneity,” when translated into its Arabic equivalent aṣlāniyya, takes on a frightening connotation that evokes division and discord, even among some progressive intellectuals and politicians.[4]

The argument against the conceptualization and deployment of Amazigh indigeneity is the result of a confluence of histories of conquest. Firstly, foreign colonization of North Africa ended with the 1962 independence of Algeria—the only settler colony in the Maghreb that would have satisfied the current definition of an Indigenous people facing a contemporary settler colonial state or society. Secondly, the Arab-Muslim presence, which was established with the Muslim conquests during the eighth century, predates and therefore eludes recent conceptualizations of indigeneity. Camouflaging the invasion of Amazigh lands in the eighth century under the name al-fatḥ al-islāmi (the Islamic opening) undermines the premise of a vanquished and disempowered First People in Tamazgha. Some conservative intellectuals involved in these debates, such as Abdelkarim Ghallab, have gone so far as to borrow the notion, popular among some Amazigh activists, that everyone in Tamazgha[5] (including Arabic speakers) is Amazigh, in order to refute the Amazigh activists’ claims to indigeneity.[6]

This history of conquest is further complicated by language. To understand reactive positions, like Ghallab’s, we must return to unpack the terms “Indigenous” and “indigeneity” in Arabic. Aṣl means “origins”, and aṣlī means “the original” or “the one who is authentically from a place.” “Indigeneity” is translated as aṣlāniyya, which is also derived from the same aṣl and connotes “origins.” In Tamazight, the same Arabic root is Amazighized, and amṣlī (Indigenous/Native) and tamṣlīyt (indigeneity) evoke the same meanings. However, if we proceed by finding counterexamples, each one of these terms has its opposite. The existence of an aṣlī/amṣlī supposes the existence of a gharīb/imzzī (stranger/newcomer), and aṣlānīyya/tamṣlīyt (indigeneity) presupposes the existence of ghurba/timzzit (non-indigeneity). As a result, everything that Imazighen are in their homeland signifies that which those who consider themselves Arab are not. Although the Amazigh activists’ approach is much more nuanced (insofar as it considers everyone in Tamazgha to be Amazigh even if they became Arabized over time) the opposition to the first articulations of Amazigh indigeneity in the mid-1990s was very vocal and discursively aggressive.

The conservative positions of the Arabist camp failed to prevent Imazighen from becoming aware of their indigenous status. With the completion of Jose Martinez Cobo’s report entitled “Study of the Problem of Discrimination against Indigenous Populations” in 1986,[7] the UN Special Rapporteur of the Subcommission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities laid much of the groundwork for claims for indigeneity worldwide. Less than four years later, the Soviet Union disintegrated, and human rights–specifically Indigenous rights–received significant global attention.[8] Meanwhile, in 1991 the Amazigh associations in Morocco signed the Agadir Charter, and in 1993 they sent a delegation to the World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna. The delegation, comprised of lawyers Ahmad Degherni and Hassan Id Balkassam, discovered that the UN’s definition of Indigenous people applied to Imazighen and therefore decided to inscribe Amazigh activism within the context of indigeneity.[9] As Id Balkassam explained to me in an interview, the two Amazigh delegates had the option of choosing between the subcommittee on minorities and the subcommittee on Indigenous people, and they determined that the latter was more productive. This encounter with global indigeneity discourse and practices marked a shift in the operation of the ACM both locally and globally. In Morocco, specifically, a group of lawyers that included Id Balkassam and Degherni oriented Amazigh activism towards human rights, departing from the popular culturalist approach that prevailed among the members of al-jam‘iyya al-maghribiyya li-al-baḥt wa-al-tabādul al-thaqāfī (the Moroccan Association for Research and Cultural Exchange, AMREC).[10] Hassan Id Balkassam went on to become a member of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues and the founding president of the Indigenous Peoples of Africa Coordinating Committee, which deepened Amazigh connections to the global indigeneity movement. 

This new Indigenous trend elicited strong responses from the mainstays of Moroccan culture. After conservative Arab-nationalists vehemently rejected  the statement that a group of associations issued after Degherni’s and Id Balkassam’s participation at the Vienna conference,  even Brahim Akhiyyat, the long-term president of AMREC, felt the need to distance himself from the statement’s use of the word “indigenous” to refer to Imazighen. In his memoirs al-Nahḍa al-amāzīghīyya, he focuses in particular on the innocence of the phrase “indigenous people” in the “Memorandum on the Amazigh Cultural and Linguistic Rights” presented at the Vienna conference. In Akhiyyat’s words, for AMREC, it will become clear to us that those who articulated this concept [indigeneity] meant the people whose lands were despoiled and who were subjected to genocide and replaced by other people who occupied their land, leaving the minority of Indigenous people who survived marginalized and unintegrated into the larger society. The idea of indigeneity was devised to help them and to accompany them in order to be developed and rehabilitated. This applies to Native Americans, Australian Aboriginals, and some people in Latin America. In the association, we found that considering Amazigh people an Indigenous people is not worthy of us. Rather, it’s an insult since there are no Indigenous and non-indigenous people in Morocco because everyone has been deeply rooted in this land for millennia.[11]

Akhiyyat’s reactionary position vis-à-vis indigeneity, which is also the position of AMREC, is quite tricky– and yet understandable. AMREC emerged in 1967 at the height of the “Years of Lead,” and it used popular culture to deflect attention from its mission of instilling Amazigh consciousness among its members. Most of AMREC’s founders were educators, their focus on local and gradual change was a successful textbook case of soft power to influence Moroccan institutions. This practice had already given AMREC great legitimacy among politicians, administrators, and even conservative segments in Moroccan society.  The explicit adoption of “indigeneity” would have meant alienating many of these partners, ones who increasingly shared AMREC’s vision for an all-inclusive Morocco. It is very difficult to determine whether Akhiyyat’s words were strategically chosen to defuse the outrage that had arisen from the Vienna conference. It could also be interpreted as a way of distancing AMREC’s moderate positions from the more radical tendencies of the lawyerly approach centered on human rights, which was gaining more ground in conjunction with the constitution of the Congrès Mondial Amazigh (Amazigh World Congress, AWC) in 1994.

These developments had an impact on the Amazigh musical scene. Exchanges between Amazigh artists, joint performances, and encounters in activist spaces allowed Amazigh music to be a precursor to public expressions of Amazigh indigeneity. Amazigh music, particularly the genre of tazenzart, is replete with references to aṣl (origin) and connections to the land. Because of the language barrier, this musical scene has mostly escaped the attention of those who oppose Amazigh indigeneity. Largely free of this opposition, Amazigh music has articulated and continues to articulate the dispossession of Imazighen in their homeland of Tamazgha.

Genealogies of Tazenzart in Morocco
The 1970s were extremely rich for Amazigh music in Tamazgha. In Morocco, the desire to renew the foundations of society and break away from colonial legacies gave rise to several transformative cultural and political movements. Efforts to fight cultural and political sclerosis gave birth to a vibrant Moroccan Marxist-Leninist Movement as well as a burst of new publications, which established both a culture and an appetite  for cultural renewal in the country.[12] The political, cultural, and social impasse in the country, especially after the Casablanca uprising in March 1965, compelled Moroccan youth to seek answers—ones that could show them how to transform their society and infuse new blood into a slowly calcifying system. This was the context that fostered musical innovation amongst Moroccan youth: targeted protest and a re-envisioning of the world. Bands like Nass El Ghiwane and Jil Jilala, which emerged in 1971 in Casablanca and Marrakesh, respectively,[13] created a new musical consciousness and voiced the cries of the marginalized in Moroccan working-class neighborhoods. Departing from the Andalusian and classical styles that were conventional at the time , these bands and others like them experimented with styles, mined their musical heritage to find rhythms and lyrics to reinvent, and fused diverse musical traditions to create a style that embraced the rebellious spirit of the time. During this era, musical groups were not satisfied with playing the music that already existed, and instead sought  to leave their own mark on post-independence Morocco’s sense of musicality and melody as a whole. These bands, born in the aftermath of Moroccan independence, are now deeply entrenched in Moroccan Darijaphones’ collective musical memory.

The predominantly Amazigh region of the Souss, located in the south of Morocco, experienced its own musical renewal. In the areas where Tashlḥīt is spoken, Amazigh music is traditionally associated with collective forms of singing and dance, such as Aḥwāsh and Rwāys, or tānḍḍāmt, a form of poetic jousts accompanied by the traditional dance of Aḥwāsh.[14]  These classical musical forms, which still exist today, have their own stars, practitioners, and audiences throughout southeast and southwest Morocco. However, the Souss was not isolated from the politico-cultural atmosphere of 1970s Morocco and the musical sensibility that grew out of urban spaces in the northern cities. As Jill Jilala and Nass El Ghiwane emerged in Marrakesh and Casablanca, respectively, Soussi Amazigh music experienced a transition  between classical practices beholden to tradition and the birth of a novel aesthetic sensibility. These innovations involved the incorporation of new instruments, borrowed melodies, professional poetry, and even the active involvement of civil society in creating musical taste. Despite its far-reaching impact on the way Amazigh music evolved, the coexistence of traditional and the new styles was, apart from some disputes, quite smooth. In fact, the transition would not have happened had it not been for the support of the older generation, who,  in the absence of conservatories and spaces for learning music, taught the new innovators how to play Amazigh musical instruments.. This is precisely why I talk about  “counterintuitive indigeneity” in this article. Indigenous discourses have emphasized a return to a traditional, and in some cases problematic, unchanged past. However, in this Amazigh context, it was innovation and renewal that were crucial for reclaiming and sustaining Amazigh indigeneity.

The town of Dcheira, which is ten kilometers away from the city of Agadir, played a major role in the emergence of the new Amazigh music. Even as residential, working-class neighborhoods in Casablanca and Marrakesh  witnessed the emergence of Nass El Ghiwane and Jil Jilala, Dcheira was the birthplace of the most transformative Amazigh musical experience to date. While Dcheira is an outlying suburb  of the touristic and cosmopolitan city of Agadir, the town’s youth managed to stay in sync with the musical trends emerging from larger urban centers across Morocco, and were exposed to the music of The Beatles and the hippie revolution. As a result, Dcheira and the nearby Aït Melloul, another peripheral semi-urban center, gave birth to Tabghaynust (The Beetle), Laqdām (Strides), Titar (The Dagger’s Sheath), and Izenzaren (Sun Rays) between 1965 and 1973.[15] Much of these groups’ genealogies is entangled with the participants’ subjective experiences and understandings of their own contributions to this emerging musical consciousness. The members’ trajectories converged and diverged over the years, making it difficult to chronicle their stories. Only Izenzaren, which was established in Dcheira sometime between 1972 and 1973, would later totally embody the significance of this rich experience by being the eponym of tazenzart (“the style of Izenzaren” or, to be more literal, “the sunray musical style”). In 1975, Izenzaren split into two bands, Izenzaren Iggout and Izenzaren Chamkh, and although the split divided their fans, it enriched the genre while also increasing its fanbase. Abdelaziz Chamkh and Abdelhadi Iggout, the two lead singers and banjo players, developed and perfected their own distinctive styles within the parameters of tazenzart.

Tazenzart has dominated the Amazigh musical scene since 1975. More than any other Tamazight musical genre, tazenzart established a niche that came to quench the thirst of Amazigh youth for more modern and rebellious music. To differentiate itself from  classical songs, like those of Lhaj Belaïd, that usually eulogized the powerful and recycled themes about religion and wisdom, Izenzaren made two important changes. First, they adapted written poetry to music, bringing a literary sensibility to their songs. This poetic slant opened their experiences to ambiguity, polysemy, and new imagery, reflecting the soul-searching work of Amazigh poets who articulated their own place in a world that disregarded their language. Second, they incorporated new instruments like the banjo, violin, and tam-tam, into Amazigh music.  Izenzaren’s search for novelty beyond the classical monochord ribāb (rabab) and nnaqūs (metal clapper) yielded new sounds and rhythms, distinguishing it from other musical bands. For example, the talented Iggout incorporated Indian and Tibetan-sounding melodies into Amazigh music.

Izenzaren also had their own poet: Mohammed El Hanafi, who authored original poems and drew on preexisting folklore to create some of their most famous songs. El Hanafi has recently come under fire by critics who contest his authorship of many of the poems attributed to him. It has now been established that El Hanafi did indeed draw on the work of the Black Amazigh poet M’Bark Ben Zaida and several others when he composed some of his poems. Nevertheless, Western notions of sole-author authorship cannot capture the nature of the creative endeavor that these artists were undertaking in this highly promiscuous context. Controversies aside, it remains important to examine how Izenzaren borrowed, readapted, changed, transformed, and recycled poems that preexisted the band’s establishment. This is the only way to get a better grasp of the very notion of authorship as it pertains to indigenous songs, specifically considering their extemporaneous composition and collective reuse in music and other settings. 

As Dcheira was undergoing a musical awakening, the Moroccan capital of Rabat, five hundred kilometers away, was also experiencing a reinvention of Amazigh music.[16] AMREC president and co-founder Ibrahim Akhiyyat and his colleagues came to understand that a renewal of Amazigh music was needed in order to pique the interest of  Amazigh youth and to respond to the esthetic needs of their era. AMREC was founded in 1967 by Tashlḥīt speakers who lived, worked, or studied between Kenitra, Rabat, and Casablanca. Their goal was to revitalize Amazigh language and culture through the backdoor of folklore and popular culture, and they kept from openly stating the Amazigh nature of their cultural program in order to circumvent state censorship.[17] To concretize this musical renewal, AMREC leaders chose to partner with a Darijaphone band that would sing Amazigh songs written by members of the association. This had the advantage of creating a bilingual band and spared AMREC the trials and travails of founding its own. Nonetheless, the stigmatization of Amazigh language and culture ran deeper and was more influential than AMREC’s goodwill. The two bands withdrew from their highly incentivized agreements with the association. The association realized that only Imazighen would care enough to sing in their language in a climate of generalized stigma towards them, leading AMREC to work on establishing its own band.[18] A chance meeting between Ammouri M’barek and Akhiyyat marked the birth of Usman (Lightning) under Ammouri’s direction in 1975.[19] Composed of Rabat-based Amazigh youth who played guitar, accordion, and violin as well as other instruments, Usman breathed fresh air into the Amazigh musical scene in the Rabat-Casablanca area.[20]

Algeria was also having its own transformative musical moment. In 1973, Idir was finishing up his university studies when the opportunity arose for him to replace another artist for a performance on national radio. This was the beginning of his legendary ascent to musical prominence not just in Algeria, but globally. Once he finished his compulsory military service, Idir moved to France in 1976, where his musical talent flourished. Nabil Boudaa best captures the role that Idir played by observing that “Idir knew that the artist must sometimes be politically engaged and use his artistic talent to fight against all types of oppression and injustice. By using lyrics and music to convey the pain and suffering of his people, Idir became more than a singer; he articulated the conscience of his people.”[21] His most famous song, “A Vava Inouva,” has transcended national borders to give Amazigh people across the globe a sense of collective identity and of belonging to Tamazgha. The myth at the heart of this song is one version of a story  that Amazigh people have likely heard or learned about in their childhoods. Hearing it rendered so melodiously with gentle guitar accompaniment elicited a great deal of pride amongst Imazighen.

“A Vava Inouva” captured the power of the oral transmission of Amazigh myths. Chronologically, Idir rose to prominence after Morocco had already had its artistic awakening. However, it is possible to consider Paris as a locus for the cross-pollination of his musical experience with that of his Moroccan counterparts.  It has been very difficult to find reliable information about any overlaps between tazenzart and Idir’s experience, but it is highly probable that the Olympia was a point of convergence for these Maghrebi and Amazigh artists.[22] In his later years, Idir made frequent visits to Morocco, and his friendship with Amazigh activists in the country was an open secret. While personal encounters between Idir and Moroccan artists have yet to be documented, musical exchanges did exist. In an interview he gave to the Moroccan Amazigh newspaper Tasafut (July-August, 1998), Idir  emphasized that he “listened to Izenzaren and Nass El Ghiwane for a long time. They did not see me, but I communicated with them even though I did not know them.” There was, then, a musical link between Idir and  his Moroccan contemporaries in the industry.

Of all the musical experiences I have surveyed so far, Ammouri’s is the closest to Idir’s. Usman brought in the guitar, sang poems, and included Western melodies, drawing on the modern musical training of some its members. Ammouri’s own childhood in the Franciscan-run orphanage in Taroudant equipped him to become a trilingual musician,[23] and his singing and use of the guitar à la Idir probably also stems from his Francophone upbringing. That said, it is important to investigate trans-Tamazghan artistic dialogues between the different Amazigh-oriented bands, as this may offer a generative understanding of how music fostered Amazigh consciousness and a sense of indigeneity through the rhythms and the retrospective interpretation of their musical interventions. These bands were evolving in an atmosphere in which Amazigh youth were becoming conscious of their subaltern status, and music both traveled among them and became a space for advocacy on behalf of their Indigenous language and culture.

Land and the Musicalization of Amazigh Indigeneity

a.     Nuancing Indigeneity in the Amazigh Context

Now that I have addressed the different connections between Amazigh indigeneity and the emergence of Amazigh musical bands in the 1970s, the second section of this article will discuss the articulations of Amazigh indigeneity in the songs of Ammouri M’barek and Izenzaren Chamkh. My focus on these two male bands does not mean that Amazigh women did not contribute to the emergence of Amazigh musical consciousness. In fact, the aforementioned Fatima Tabaâmrant  is one of the most outspoken musical activists in Morocco.[24] Thanks to her popularity among fans, she was elected to Parliament in 2011 and was the first Moroccan parliamentarian to ever ask a question in the Amazigh language during a live session of the Moroccan Parliament.[25]

As I have already indicated, Tamazghan elites have a hard time accepting the concept of indigeneity. Generally, it tends to evoke Native Americans in the United States and Canada, Aboriginal populations in Australia and New Zealand, and Natives of Latin America, whose languages and cultures were dominated and expropriated by the descendants of European colonizers. These populations share a long history of being excluded, disempowered, dominated, and displaced by white settlers.[26] Economic and social institutions were tailored to serve and accommodate the interests of dominant races, languages, cultures, and economic systems to the detriment of indigenous ones. Colonizers conceived of Indigenous people as primitives who needed the European “civilizing mission” in order to become cultured. Tamazghan elites’ familiarity with these reductive cliches has prevented them from fully embracing indigeneity for reasons  I will explain later. Nevertheless, Indigenous people’s ownership of their own indigeneity has had positive ramifications for redressing the legacies of colonialism in terms of  rehabilitating local languages, drawing attention to Indigenous people’s debilitated economic capacity and disfigured topography, and foregrounding their continued political disenfranchisement.[27] Reclaiming indigeneity in these specific contexts also means making claims to past economic, historical, legal, and cultural identities, subjugated and sometimes even lost, of the lands that are now dominated by the descendants of settler colonizers.

The imbrication of settler colonialism and expansionist histories in prevailing theorizations of indigeneity leaves a space of productive ambiguity about its application to Imazighen in Tamazgha. Compared to Indigenous people in other parts of the world, Imazighen’s economic and political situation is entirely different, or at least so it seems from the outside. Imazighen have been very entrepreneurial, and their family-based economic networks have established a real Amazigh business class. Almost all of the small shop owners in Moroccan cities are from the Souss or other Amazigh-speaking areas. Aziz Akhannouch, the richest man in Morocco after the king, is Amazigh, and many wealthy Amazigh families are wealthier than their Arabic-speaking counterparts. Marriage and family relations also blur these economic lines, especially among the elites of the Souss and the Fes bourgeoisie. The recent familial link between the owner of the oil and gasoline company Akwa Group and the owner of the real estate firm Addoha Group is just one example of these alliances.

This economic success compounded by Imazighen’s strong presence in politics further complicates the framework of indigeneity that should be used to discuss Amazigh identity. Many Amazigh political leaders hold significant power in Morocco and Algeria. In 2020 Morocco, for instance, the four most important parties, the Union of Socialist Popular Forces (USFP), the National Assembly of the Independents (NAI), the Popular Movement (PM), and to the Islamist Justice and Development Party (PJD), have all been headed by Amazigh leaders.[28] Three out of Morocco’s five prime ministers in the last twenty years were Amazigh. Algeria’s first president, Ahmed Ben Bella, was Amazigh, and many officials are Amazigh or of Amazigh descent. Nevertheless, it is important to consider, beyond any facile tokenism, the unique circumstances  under which an Indigenous population is able to fully participate in the sociopolitical life of a country in which its language and culture are subjugated. The question is whether indigeneity would cease to be an issue if Amazigh language and culture were fully rehabilitated or whether there would be other historical wrongs to address, such as the restitution of toponyms, land ownership, and indigenous institutions.

What is more, focusing on apparent economic prosperity and political participation may blind us to the fact that systemic exclusion of Imazighen persists. In fact, Imazighen live under a regime of  “internal colonialism.” The notion of ‘internal colonialism” emerged in Latin America to refer to cases in which natives of recently independent countries oppressed their fellow citizens, thereby reproducing colonial attitudes.[29] Of particular interest here is the territorial divide between backward areas inhabited by the exploited, and urban centers dominated by those who exploit.[30] Under this definition, Imazighen do indeed suffer from a state of internal colonialism. The disenfranchisement of Imazighen takes different forms, and until recently this has included a lack of access to state services in predominantly rural Amazigh areas. Development initiatives and mega-infrastructure projects seem to have avoided Amazigh regions consistently for over fifty years. The recent earthquake in the predominantly Amazigh High Atlas revealed the impact of the state’s  disregard for Amazigh lives and the structural legacy of the misdistribution of resources. This internal colonialism is also manifested in the merciless extraction of underground resources, particularly gold and silver, from Amazigh lands without any tangible benefits for the local populations. As sociologist Zakia Salime has written about the silver mines in Imider in southeast Morocco, Amazigh activists’ protests stage a “refusal of the appropriation of Amazigh land and resources by the state and by extractive companies.”[31] However, the clearest form of this internal colonialism’s dispossession of Imazighen since the late 1990s has been the expropriation of their communal lands for different state-led schemes, including mega-plants for the production of solar energy or farming projects that have only exhausted the aquifer.

Even as the situation of the Imazighen is far better economically and politically than that of other Indigenous people across the globe, in certain ways the expropriation of communal land and continued isolation of Amazigh areas, in addition to linguistic and cultural repression, place Imazighen on par with other Indigenous people. Additionally, political participation does not mean that Imazighen are in charge of their destiny. In fact, Imazighen are no longer self-governing through any tribal system or indigenous institutions that existed in the past. Thus they participate in elections under a system that does not recognize their ancestral institutions and disregards their rich heritage of communal and participative deliberation. Additionally, some Amazigh elites see their interests as an extension of the dominant class’ and, historically, there have always been Imazighen who, like indigenous leaders in other parts of the world, betrayed the cause of their community. Amazigh claims to Indigeneity, then, are supported by both history and the deplorable conditions of the economic and cultural—if not political—situation in their ancestral homeland.

In other words, notions of economic and political domination may be altered to suit the circumstances of the people in North Africa, in which Indigeneity acquires a different meaning than, say, in Anglophone countries with oppressed Indigenous populations. There is, of course, a difference between the Imazighen of Libya, Tunisia, and the Canary Islands, who have neither the numbers nor the civil society infrastructure that Moroccan and Algerian Imazighen have put in place to defend their rights. The Indigenous populations of the Canary archipelago do nonetheless offer striking similarities to other Indigenous peoples whose ways of life were erased and subsumed under European settler colonial systems. Unlike other Indigenous communities that witnessed linguicides and economic and social obliteration, indigeneity discourses in Morocco and Algeria have put the emphasis on linguistic and cultural rights, without losing sight of the special relationship Imazighen have had with their land through customs, traditions, and conventions that were suppressed by the French colonial state and its post-independence heirs. Despite this particularity, the use of Amazigh Indigeneity in this context has larger ramifications for the nature of political regimes under which Amazigh people live. In addition to working to advance the linguistic and cultural rights of Morocco’s Imazighen, Amazigh activism’s use of international notions of Indigeneity provides them with a tool to fight against authoritarianism. Using Indigenous status to claim Amazigh rights is more likely to help democratize repressive regimes, though it should be noted that democracy has not always meant equity for Indigenous peoples, as the situation in North America clearly shows.

b.    Music and Amazigh Indigeneity

Despite the questions that might arise from these considerations regarding the meaning of indigeneity in the Amazigh context, Amazigh music is a locus in which indigeneity has been articulated. Land— meaning both villages of origin as well as the broader homeland—has figured prominently in musical articulations of Amazigh indigeneity. The word amūr, which Amazigh activists have picked up on, is the equivalent of the Arabic word waṭan (nation/homeland). Thus, they make references to “amūr amazigh” or “amur n imazighen” (the Amazigh homeland). This Indigeneity-conscious music rehabilitated the village, and the lexicon of nature has become prominent in sung poems. Land (also translated as akāl) is essential for Imazighen to assert that they belong to their ancestral homeland, a place that speaks their language.

Usman (Lightning), the band established in partnership between AMREC and Ammouri, particularly excelled in this regard. The poems Usman sang were authored by activists such as Safi Moumen Ali, Brahim Akhiyyat, Ali Sidqi Azaykou, and Mohamed Moustaoui, all of whom were involved in the early expression of Morocco’s Amazigh identity.[32] In Usman’s repertoire, one encounters words like amān (water), llouz (almonds/almond tree), tizwit (bee), ayyīs (horse), igger (field), tamazirt (village/land of origin), and wul (soul/heart), each referring to a connection to land and place. Often nostalgic or romantic, these songs played a role in “connecting the youth to their roots.”[33] The challenge for the composers of the poems that Ammouri and others sang was to successfully convey their deep-rootedness in their amūr/akāl while also demonstrating the poetic prowess of the Amazigh language. Thus, Tamazight was pushed to its limits in order to reconnect youth with their origins and boost  their Amazigh pride while anchoring Amazighity in the land. Usman adopted poems written by activists and adapted them to modern, danceable melodies (sing. taḥwasht/plu. tiḥwashīn), inaugurating a new relationship between Amazigh audiences and their music. The turn to the village as a theme of Amazigh music brought archaic themes  up to date, as evidenced both in the melodies and choice of rhythms and instruments, which further enticed urban Amazigh youth to become involved. So instead of Amazigh places of origin being a source of stigma—since  they are usually associated with backwardness—Usman’s music turned them into loci of pride, anchoring a distinctly Amazigh sense of self in a fast-Arabizing society. It should be said, however, that Usman’s expression of indigeneity was subtle, metaphorical, and stripped of any confrontational pretensions.

This connection to the land was pushed in a more activist direction by Izenzaren Chamkh. Of all Moroccan Amazigh musicians discussed here, Chamkh is the one who engaged most in an explicit musical discourse that foregrounded overt indigeneity. Chamkh’s songs are like manifestos that challenge the status quo and offer correctives to the Amazigh people’s history of exclusion in their own land. In their song “Ayt Laṣl Anga” (We Are the Indigenous), Chamkh stages a dichotomy between the aït laṣl (the indigenous) and ur nhjim (we did not invade). The binary, which I have already referred to in the preceding paragraphs, is between the Indigenous people and their invaders. As the song goes:

ⵖⴻⵍⵍⵉ ⵖ ⵚⵔⴼⵏ                                       
where lived
ⵍⴰⵊⴷⵓⴷ ⵉ ⵉⵍⵉ ⵜⴰⵔⵉⵅ      
our ancestors, and there is history
ⴰⵢⵜ ⵍⴰⵚⵍ ⴰ ⵏⴳⴰ
we are the Indigenous
ⵓⵔ ⵏⵀⵊⵉⵎ ⵉⵍⵉⵏ ⵡⴰⵔⵔⴰⵜⵏⵖ                    
not invaders, and we have written proof

Laṣl (origin/Indigeneity) is contrasted with lhujūm (invasion) to show the difference between those who are from the land and those who invaded it. This tamṣlīyt (Indigeneity) is not, however, merely based on hearsay; it is substantiated with arratn (written documents). “We are Indigenous—we are not invaders, and we have written proof.” Since Imazighen are Indigenous, those who are not are placed outside the distinguishing concept of Indigeneity, precisely because they are invaders and cannot prove their connection to the land. The song pushes even further by asking a rhetorical question: “ⴰⵔⴰ ⵓ ⵎⴰⵏⵉ ⵉⴳⴰ ⵖⵯⴰⴷ ⴰⴽ ⵉⵏⵏⴰⵏ ⴽⵓⵙⵙⴰⵏⵖ/ ara umānī iga ghuwād ak innān kkusān-gh?” (Where are you from—you who claim that that you are our heir?”) The baselessness of the invader’s claims are then debunked through written records that prove the Imazighen are on their own land. In another song entitled “ⵙⵓⵙ ⴰⵢⴳⴰⵏ ⵜⴰⵎⴰⵣⵉⵔⵜ ⵉⵏⵉ/ Souss aygan tamazirt inū” (Souss is my homeland), Chamkh takes pride in the Souss as his homeland, the place of his birth, and where he “will be buried when [he] die[s].” In a line that creates a contrast between the times when Imazighen were sovereign and their state of current domination, the poem states “ⴰⵎⴰⵣⵉⵖ ⴰ ⵓⵜⵎⴰⵣⵉⵔⵜ ⵉⵏⵉ ⵙⵏⵖ ⵓⴽⴰⵏ ⵉⵙ ⵢⵓⴼ ⵓⵣⵎⵣ ⵏⴽ ⵜⴰⵔⵓⵙⵉ ⴽⵓⵍⵍⵓⵜ/ amazigh a u tmazirt inū sngh ukān is yuf uzmz nk tarusī kullut” (Amazigh my homeland partner, I know that your era is better than all the treasures). In this particularly sad song, the singer connects the inability to speak one’s mother tongue to the disenfranchisement of people in the Souss. He calls for a revolution against the people “ⵛⵛⴰⵏⵉⵏ ⵜⴰⵎⴰⵣⵉⵔⵜ ⵉⵢⴷ ⴱⴰⴱⵏⵙ ⴰⴽⵯⵔⵏ ⵍⵖⵍⵍⴰⵜ/ shshanīn tamazirt iyd bab ns akurn lghllāt” (those who stole the homeland and also its harvests.”[34] Sung in a defiant tone, this song opens the horizon for the rebellion of the Indigenous when the tongue refuses to accept the silence it is enjoined to keep.

The expropriation of Amazigh collective lands is powerfully articulated in Chamkh’s song entitled “Bughāba” (The Forest Service). Drawing on this department’s longstanding practice of land-grabbing in Amazigh areas, “Bughāba,” which is based on the eponymous poem written by Abdellah Yacoubi, assails the state’s excuses for undermining Amazigh people’s ownership of their land.[35] It is not just that the land, akāl, was taken for supposed afforestation projects, but also that it was also turned into reservations for wild boar, which created its own set of challenges for the populations. Bughāba denounces the expropriation of Amazigh land and reframes the actions of the wild boar as part of a larger strategy to disempower local communities. In one of its renditions, Chamkh highlighted the fact that “words are the singers’ weapons.”  This excerpt captures the central core of “Bughāba”:

ⵉⴽⵙⴰⵖ ⴰ ⴳⵎⴰ ⵜⴰⵎⴰⵣⵉⵔⵜ ⵉⵏⵓ ⵢⴰⵡⵉⵜⵏⵜ
stripped us of our home and took it away
ⵉⴽⵙⴰⵖ ⴰ ⴳⵎⴰ ⵜⴰⵎⴰⵣⵉⵔⵜ ⵉⵏⵓ ⵎⴰⵏⵉ ⵔⵉⵖ
stripped of home, I have nowhere to go
ⵉⵏⵖⴰⵢⴰⵖ ⵏⵉⵜ ⵏⴱⵉⴷ ⵓⵔⵜⴰ ⵏⴽⵛⵉⵎ ⴰⴽⴰⵍ                 
he killed us standing and even before we are buried
ⴰⵡⵉⵏ ⴰⵔⴳⴰⵏ ⴷ ⵜⴰⴳⴰⵏⵜ ⴰⵡⵉⵏ ⴰⴽⴰⵍ
they took argan trees, the forest, and also took the land       
ⵢⴰⵡⵉ ⴱⵉⵢⴼⴰⴷⴷⵏ ⵜⴰⴳⴰⵏⴰⵜ ⴰⵔⴰⵖ ⵉⵙⵔⵡⴰⵜ         
and brought the wild boar to torment us
ⴰⵔ ⵉⵇⵇⴰⵣ ⴰⵔ ⵉⵣⵎⵣⴰⵔ ⴰⵔⴰⵖ ⵉⵙⵔⴼⵓⴼⵓⵏ  
digging [land], scattering [crops] and tortures us
ⵃⵔⵔⵉ ⵏ ⵢⴰⵏ ⴰⵜⵏ ⵖⵯⵉⵏ ⵓⵍⴰ ⴰⵜⵜⵉⵏ ⵍⴽⵎⵏ     
woe to the one who dares to capture or touch it.[36]

Iksāgh (took/stole/snatched from us) expresses the resistance to surrender the land. Amazigh agency is deactivated, and all the action-driven verbs are attributed to the Forest Service. Imazighen are humiliated on their own land, now given to the wild boar as a strategy to drive the inhabitants away from their ancestral and valuable home.  This harkens back to UN conventions about Indigenous people and the importance of respecting their spaces, something that clearly does not take place in this poem.[37]

Unlike the proudly asserted connections to land found in other Amazigh music, “Būghaba” is openly critical of the land-grabbing system in place. The poem lists a litany of ways in which the Indigenous Imazighen are put at potentially deadly risk by the Forest Services. Instead of toeing the fine line between poetry and politics, the political emerges powerfully in this poem. Journalist Mohamed Ziri has emphasized that the political context in which Izenzaren emerged did not allow “direct speech,” but the freedom of creative writing transcended the constraints of their situation in ways that “amplified the aesthetics of the poem and opened it to all sorts of interpretations and hermeneutics,” in turn prolonging the life of Izenzaren amongst audiences of different ages.[38]

When Chamkh sang “Būghāba” in 2013, the margin of freedom of expression was broader, and the notion of indigeneity had already taken a stronger root. Speaking across generations, both in the past and towards the future, was now possible. “Bughāba” also points to the intergenerational consequences of land-grabbing in Amazigh areas:

ⵀⴰⵏ ⵏⵣⴷⵖ ⵖ ⴷⵖⵉⴷ ⵓⵔⵜⴰ ⵉⵍⵍⵉ ⵜⵜⴰⵔⵉⵅ 
we’ve lived here before history
ⵢⵉⵔⵉ ⴱⵓⵖⴰⴱⴰ ⴰⴷⴰⵏⵖ ⵉⴽⴽⵉⵙ ⴰⴽⴰⵍ ⵏⵖ          
and the Forest Service wants to take away our land
ⵡⴰ ⵀⴰⵏ ⵍⴰⵊⴷⵓⴷ ⵏⵖ ⴰⴷⴰⵏⵖ ⵉⴼⵍⵏ ⴰⴽⴰⵍⴰ                  
it is our ancestors who bequeathed it to us
ⴰⴷⴷⵉⵙ ⵏⴱⵏⵓ ⵏⵉⵍⵉ ⴳⵉⵙ ⴰⵔ ⴰⵙⵙ ⵏⵏⴰ ⵏⵎⵎⵓⵜ        
to build our homes—and live—until we die
ⵏⴼⵍ ⵜⵉⴷ ⴷⴰⵖ ⵉⵡⴰⵔⵔⴰⵡ ⵏⵖ ⵓⵔⵔⴰⵜⵏ ⵅⵡⵙⵙⴰⵏ    
and we pass it down to our children[39]

Later on the poem refers to the Bughāba as the la‘adū (enemy). The last sentence of the song reads: “The enemy took my tamazirt (my land/home).” Thus, the Forest Service, as the main engine of the state’s expropriation of Imazighen, is now an open enemy of the Amazigh people.

The song also offers insight into the sweeping call for indigenous autonomy. Amazigh women are summoned to work hand in hand with their male counterparts to assert their right to land. Composed and sung at a time when the discussion about the al-sulāliyyāt movement (women claiming the right to collective lands) was being had across Morocco,[40] “Bughāba” reveals itself to be a particularly feminist song. This spirit can be discerned in the following stanza: 

ⴰ ⵜⴰⵡⵜⵎⵜ ⵜⴰⵎⴰⵣⵉⵖⵜ ⴰ ⵍⴰⵍⵍⴰ ⴽⵎⵎⵉⵏ                  
And you, respected Amazigh lady
ⴰⵣⵎⵣ ⴰⴷ ⵔⴰⵏ ⴰⴷ ⵏⴱⵉⴷ ⵏⵎⵓⵏ ⵉ ⵡⴰⵡⴰⵍ   
this time requires that we unite for our cause
ⵓⴼⵓⵙ ⵖ ⵓⴼⵓⵙ ⴰⴷⴰⵏⵖ ⵓⵔ ⴰⵡⵉⵏ ⴰⴽⴰⵍ                  
hand in hand so that they don’t steal land
ⵀⴰⵏ ⵏⵣⴷⴰⵖ ⵖ ⴷⵖⵉⴷ ⵓⵔⵜⴰ ⵉⵍⵍⵉ ⵜⵜⴰⵔⵉⵅ          
We’ve lived here before history[41]

These verses convey the message that the outcome of this policy will impact both men and women equally. Both Amazigh men and women will pay the price of the Forest Service’s land-grabbing practices in Amazigh-speaking areas. It is important to emphasize the feminist streak in Amazigh music, as evidenced by these compositions.

History as a pillar of Imazighen’s belonging to the land is also foregrounded in Chamkh’s song “Argan d umāzīgh” (Argan and the Amazigh). The song provides crucial background that can help us tie together the connections between the forest, the land, and Imazighen. As its title indicates, this song is about the argan tree, which is only found in the southwest Moroccan regions inhabited by Imazighen. The song was both written and composed by Aziz Chamkh. It starts with a very powerful opening, inviting those who are ignorant to discover that  “yān usghār irā dawn iml timitār” (one type of tree will show you the signs).[42] This tree is called the argan, which the poem qualifies as being the “first to be in our place [land].” Thus, the argan is given precedence over any other tree or person, making it a timeless witness. As such, argan will:

ⴰⴷⴰⴽ ⵢⴰⴽⴽⴰ ⵜⵓⴳⴳⴰ ⵏ ⵡⴰⵎⴰⵏ ⵓⵍⴰ ⴰⴽⴰⵍ      
give you the testimony about water and land
ⴰⴷⴰⴽ ⵏⵎⵍ ⴰⵎⴰⵣⵉⵖ ⵓⵍⴰ ⵎⴰⵜⵜⵏ ⵢⵓⵔⵓⵏ                     
show you Imazighen and their ancestors
ⴰⴷⴰⴽ ⵉⵎⵍ ⵜⴰⵎⴰⵣⵉⵔⵜ ⵓⵍⴰ ⵜⴰⵙⵓⵜ ⵏⵙ                   
show you the homeland and its generations[43]

In its essence, this poem conveys the fact that Imazighen and the argan are contemporaneous in their shared life on this land. The following line opens the poem to the broader issue of an Amazigh homeland in stating “ⴰ ⵢⴰⵎⵓⵔ ⵉⵏⴰ ⴰⵃ ⴰ ⵢⴰⴽⴰⵍ ⵉⵏⵓ/a yamūr inū aḥ a yakal īnū” (Oh my homeland or my land!) Since argan and Amazigh both originated on the same land, “shkrn tāsūtīn” (their generations comingled). As the argan is a special type of tree that only grows in the Souss, it is reasonable to conclude that in Chamkh’s rendering, Imazighen and the argan are interchangeable since they have been on this same land since time immemorial. Both of them are Indigenous to the sole land on which the argan can grow and produce. 

Amazigh music reflects a crucial debate that was taking place amongst Amazigh activists regarding Amazigh Indigenous rights to their land amid aggressive state land-grabbing practices. Interestingly, prior to 2014, the Arabic word aṣlāniyya was never used in documents written in Arabic and published in Morocco. Hassan Id Balkassam, one of the prominent lawyers who has been engaged in Indigeneity discourses locally and globally, wrote that:

Rehabilitating all the dimensions of Amazigh cannot happen without taking economic, political, and social measures to stop the exclusion and marginalization of millions of people who inhabit plains, mountains, and forests that produce significant wealth, though they do not benefit from its revenues. This requires a reconsideration of Morocco’s political and economic system with a view to establishing a federal system that would allow millions [of people] to manage their resources and benefit from them.[44]

It is clear from this quote that the international definition of Indigeneity is at work in Id Balkassam’s thought, although he does not state it explicitly. We may speculate that, speaking in 2004, the aṣlāniyya would have rubbed many politicians the wrong way. This reservation seems to have eroded, however, by 2014. A charter that emerged from the Confederation and Tamaynut Organisation conference organized by Tamunt n‘Iffus and held from April 19-20, 2014 in Agadir made use of Indigeneity and its underlying concepts. 

Entitled “The Moroccan Charter for the Protection of Collective and Individual Rights over Lands, Forests and Natural Resources Based on the Amazigh Common Law, the new Constitution, and Convention 169 relating to Indigenous and Tribal Peoples in Independent Countries,” the charter uses the word “Indigenous” forty-five times throughout the document. Responding to a government program that would ask communities to surrender twenty million hectares of collective lands, the charter also denounces land-grabbing and the “prejudice [it does] to the dignity of the members of indigenous communities and tribal peoples” whose lands are confiscated.[45] The charter draws on the “Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention, 1989 (No. 169),” whose Section II addresses issues related to Indigenous lands and territories.[46] Countering some of the aforementioned arguments that question the Amazigh Indigeneity framework, the drafters of the charter write that “Amazigh tribes all along their history have never renounced their laws, regulations and customs, which form the basis of their system of collective and individual ownership of land, forests and resources.”[47] It is clear from this that the signatory organizations adopted an Indigenous lens to defend their land as well as to lend primacy to Tamazgha.

Moroccan Amazigh music’s emphasis on akāl evokes the fact that Imazighen are rooted in Morocco and Tamazgha. Whether used explicitly to denounce land-grabbing practices or to reclaim a sense of being ayt tmazirt (the rightful owners) or tarwa n-tmazirt (the children of the land), tazenzart has established a musical sensibility that incorporates the land into Amazigh consciousness. Land cannot be dissociated from belonging to a place and shaping its history over the course of a very long time. Once the concept of “Imazighen as inzwura/imzwura (the first ones)” is established, the question that follows is whether it is possible to be Indigenous to a land with an ancestral language and culture that are not recognized. The dissonance resulting from the marginalized status of Imazighen in their own homeland is quickly resolved as these artists’ emphasize that the land itself is subjugated. Furthermore, claiming Amazigh Indigeneity has many implications. Claiming land allows Imazighen to advocate for the reforming of the current political system to establish one that enshrines Amazigh traditions and customary law, upholding Indigenous notions of individual and collective property. Although several Amazigh activists have made these claims over the years, they still remain a small minority compared to those who focus on linguistic and cultural rights. More so than culture, land ownership can be a source of strife and instability. Many of those supporting the Amazigh cause have not crossed this line, since it would threaten the interests of those who benefited from lands expropriated by French colonialism and that the post-independence state never restituted to Amazigh tribes.

Conclusion

In this article, I have focused on how Amazigh Indigeneity is expressed through the land in a select few samples of tazenzart music in Morocco.  Although Imazighen have always innovated in their music,[48] the emergence and success of tazenzart is not solely a story of musical innovation. In addition to incorporating new instruments, poetry, rhythms, and melodies, this new music has foregrounded the Amazigh identity and the Imazighen’s rightful claims to the land of Morocco. Through the land, Amazigh music tracked the meanderings and shifts in Amazigh discourse and provided a barometer for assessing the direction that the Amazigh cause was taking. Although the article touches on both the potential of Indigeneity and its manifestations in Amazigh music, I would like to stress the fact that the expressions of Amazigh Indigeneity have many ramifications and trajectories that I am unable to address. Given the challenges of writing about an unstable area of Amazigh Studies, this article has barely scratched the surface of a topic that requires a transcontinental and transnational comparative approach in order to fully explore the connections between Moroccan and Algerian Amazigh Indigeneity discourses in music. It is, however, clear from the samples I analyzed here that the modernization of Amazigh music was contemporaneous with the emergence of the Amazigh cultural movement in the early 1970s. Encounters between Amazigh musicians and activists who were active in the urban centers of Rabat and Casablanca served to bridge the gap between music and activism and allowed musicians to convey Amazigh Indigeneity in musical form.

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Mohammed Ziri, “Qirā’a taḥlīliyya liba‘ḍ qaṣā’id majmū‘at izenzaren ‘abd al-hādī,” Ahewar, https://www.ahewar.org/debat/show.art.asp?aid=391104.

Mohammed Ait Boud, “al-Rāḥil Ammouri M’barek: Tajriba fanniyya rā’ida—al-khiṭāb al-shi‘rī al-multazim fī iṭār al-taḥdīth al-mūsīqī,” Akalpress, https://akalpress.com/5814-ammouri-mbarek-poesie-amazighe/.

Mohammed Boudhan, “Limādhāt lā yajūzu taṣnīf al-‘amāzīghiyyīn ḍimna al-shu’ūb ‘al-aṣliyya’?” Hespress, https://www.hespress.com/%D9%84%D9%85%D8%A7%D8%B0%D8%A7-%D9%84%D8%A7-%D9%8A%D8%AD%D9%88%D8%B2-%D8%AA%D8%B5%D9%86%D9%8A%D9%81-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%A3%D9%85%D8%A7%D8%B2%D9%8A%D8%BA%D9%8A%D9%8A%D9%86-%D8%B6%D9%85%D9%86-%D8%A7%D9%84-224965.html.

Mohammed Moustaoui, “Barnāmaj tīfirās: Dhikrā wafāt al-fannān mbārk ‘ammūrī wa-ta’sīs mu’assasat mbārk ‘ammūrī,” YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2fCBGQ-HaI.

Mubārak Ḥanūn. Al-ughnīyah al-shaʻbīyah al-jadīdah: Ẓāhirat nās al-ghaywān (Casablanca: Manshūrāt ʻUyūn, 1987).

al-Musṭafā Skanfal, “Min ‘Usmān’ ilā ‘Tchaikovsky’.. al-masār al-rā’i‘ li-bil‘īd al-‘akkāf,” Hespress, https://www.maghress.com/alittihad/2081473.

Mustapha Louzi, “al-Amāzīghiyya wa-al-shu‘ūb al-aṣliyya,” Hespress, https://www.hespress.com/%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%A3%D9%85%D8%A7%D8%B2%D9%8A%D8%BA%D9%8A%D8%A9-%D9%88%D8%AD%D9%82%D9%88%D9%82-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%B4%D8%B9%D9%88%D8%A8-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%A3%D8%B5%D9%84%D9%8A%D8%A9-421327.html.

Nabil Boudraa "Mourning the Loss of the Berber Troubadour Idir," Middle East Report Online, June 23, 2020, https://merip.org/2020/06/mourning-the-loss-of-the-berber-troubadour-idir/.

“Nostaligia Ammouri Mbarek,” YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKOu4bzRNyE.

Norma B. Chaloult and Yves Chaloult, “The Internal Colonialism Concept: Methodological Considerations,” Social and Economic Studies 28(4)(1979): 85-99.

Paul Silverstein’s “The Productive Plurality of Tamazgha: Boundaries, Intersections, Frictions,” Tamazgha Studies Journal 1(2023):23-34.

Paulette F. Steeves, “Indigeneity,” In obo in Anthropology, https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780199766567/obo-9780199766567-0199.xml.

Safi Moumen Ali, “Ru’ya jadīda li-al-funūn al-ghinā’iyya al-’amāzīghiyya,” in Al-mūsīqā al-’amāzīghiyya wa-irādat al-tajdīd: Majmū‘at usmān (Rabat: Manshūrāt al-Jam‘iyya al-Maghribiyya li-al-Baḥt wa-al-Tabādul al-Thaqāfī,  2002), pp. 69-83.

S. James Anaya. Indigenous Peoples in International Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996).

Rachid El Hahi, “al-Amazīghiyya, al-shu’ūb al-aṣliyya, wa-al-sulṭa,” Hespress, https://www.hespress.com/%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%A3%D9%85%D8%A7%D8%B2%D9%8A%D8%BA%D9%8A%D8%A9%D8%8C-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%B4%D8%B9%D9%88%D8%A8-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%A3%D8%B5%D9%84%D9%8A%D8%A9%D8%8C-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%A3%D8%B1%D8%B6-%D9%88%D8%A7-184072.html.

The General Conference of the International Labour Organisation, “Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention, 1989 (No. 169),” ilo.org, https://www.ilo.org/dyn/normlex/en/f?p=NORMLEXPUB:12100:0::NO::P12100_INSTRUMENT_ID:312314.

“The Moroccan Charter for the Protection of Collective and Individual Rights over Lands, Forests and Natural Resources,” https://tbinternet.ohchr.org/Treaties/CESCR/Shared%20Documents/MAR/INT_CESCR_CSS_MAR_21327_E.pdf.

The United Nations, “The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People,” UN.ORG, https://www.un.org/development/desa/indigenouspeoples/wp-content/uploads/sites/19/2018/11/UNDRIP_E_web.pdf .

TIDAF, “Izenzaren Chamkh 2015 ( aRgan d'omazigh),” YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxdhYakM1DE&list=RDXxdhYakM1DE&start_radio=1.

Zakia Salime, “A Gendered Counter-archive: Mining and Resistance in Morocco,” Development and Change 53(5): 1038. DOI: 10.1111/dech.12726.

Zakya Daoud. Lamalif: Partis pris culturels (Marrakech/Tanger: Archives des Arts, 2020).

[1] For a more detailed discussion of Tamazgha and its various implications, see Tamazgha Studies Journal 1(2023) dedicated to Tamazgha and particularly El Guabli Brahim’s “The Idea of Tamazgha: Current Articulations and Scholarly Potential,” Tamazgha Studies Journal 1(2023): 7-22 and Paul Silverstein’s “The Productive Plurality of Tamazgha: Boundaries, Intersections, Frictions,” Tamazgha Studies Journal 1(2023):23-34, which undertake an analysis of the local and diasporic uses of Tamazgha.

[2] Marisol de la Cadena and  Orin Starn, eds.,  Indigenous Experience Today (New York : Routledge, 2007), 3.

[3] Most of the debates around this topic are currently happening in rich discussions online. See for example: Rachid El Hahi, “al-Amazīghiyya, al-shu’ūb al-aṣliyya, wa-al-sulṭa,” Hespress, https://www.hespress.com/%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%A3%D9%85%D8%A7%D8%B2%D9%8A%D8%BA%D9%8A%D8%A9%D8%8C-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%B4%D8%B9%D9%88%D8%A8-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%A3%D8%B5%D9%84%D9%8A%D8%A9%D8%8C-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%A3%D8%B1%D8%B6-%D9%88%D8%A7-184072.html; Mohammed Boudhan, “Limādhāt lā yajūzu taṣnīf al-‘amāzīghiyyīn ḍimna al-shu’ūb ‘al-aṣliyya’?” Hespress, https://www.hespress.com/%D9%84%D9%85%D8%A7%D8%B0%D8%A7-%D9%84%D8%A7-%D9%8A%D8%AD%D9%88%D8%B2-%D8%AA%D8%B5%D9%86%D9%8A%D9%81-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%A3%D9%85%D8%A7%D8%B2%D9%8A%D8%BA%D9%8A%D9%8A%D9%86-%D8%B6%D9%85%D9%86-%D8%A7%D9%84-224965.html; Mustapha Louzi, “al-Amāzīghiyya wa-al-shu‘ūb al-aṣliyya,” Hespress, https://www.hespress.com/%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%A3%D9%85%D8%A7%D8%B2%D9%8A%D8%BA%D9%8A%D8%A9-%D9%88%D8%AD%D9%82%D9%88%D9%82-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%B4%D8%B9%D9%88%D8%A8-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%A3%D8%B5%D9%84%D9%8A%D8%A9-421327.html

[4] See some of the contributions in the edited volume Ma‘ārik fikriyya ḥawla al-’amāzīghiyya (Casablanca: Matḅa‘at al-Najāḥ al-Jadīda, 2002). 

[5] Abdelkarim Ghallab, “Tārīkh al-’amāzīghiyyīn,” Alalam, November 1, 1989.

[6] Ali Sidqi Azaykou argues that Moroccan culture in its entirely is Amazigh. See Azaykou, “Ta’ammulāt ḥawla al-lugha wa-al-thaqāfa al-’amāzīghiyyayn,” in Markaz Tāriq Ibn Ziyyād (ed.),  Ma‘ārik fikriyya ḥawla al-’amāzīghiyya (Casablanca: Matḅa‘at al-Najāḥ al-Jadīda, 2002), 45-57.

[7]José R. Martínez Cobo, “Study of the Problem of Discrimination against Indigenous Populations. Volume 5, Conclusions, Proposals and Recommendations,” UN.ORG, accessed August 16, 2021, https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/133666?ln=en.

[8] Amazigh activists, like Hassan Id Balkassam, seized the opportunity reframe their demands in terms of non-self-governing Indigenous peoples. See Hassan Id Belkassam. Ḥawla al-ḥuqūq al-lughawiyya wa-al-thaqāfiyya al-’amāzīghiyya (Rabat: Matḅa‘at al-Najāḥ al-Jadīda, 1992). Although the book does not use the word aṣlānī (indigenous), the focus on cultural and linguistic rights from an international human rights perspective opens up far more space for this than the prevailing local approach.

[9] Zoom interview with Hassan Id Balkassam March 2023.

[10] In this regard, Id Balkassam criticizes AMREC’s position regarding al-turāth (heritage), which he says is worthy of museums. See Id Balkassam, Ḥawla al-ḥuqūq al-lughawiyya, 37.

[11] Brahim Akhiyyat. Al-nahḍa al-amāzīghiyya kamā ‘ishtu mīylādahā wa taṭawwuraha (Rabat: Manshūrāt al-Jam‘iyya al-Maghribbya li-al-Baḥt wa-al-Tabādul al-Thaqāfī, 2012), 210.

[12] Zakya Daoud. Lamalif: Partis pris culturels (Marrakech/Tanger : Archives des Arts : 2020), 12; see Brahim El Guabli. Moroccan Other-Archives: History and Citizenship after State Violence (New York : Fordham University Press, 2023) for an integrative examination of the cultural and linguistic politics of this period.

[13]See Mubārak Ḥanūn. Al-ughnīyah al-shaʻbīyah al-jadīdah: Ẓāhirat nās al-ghaywān (Casablanca: Manshūrāt ʻUyūn, 1987); Lhoussain Simour. Larbi Batma, Nass El-Ghiwane and Postcolonial Music in Morocco (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, 2016).

[14] For a study of some of the musical genres in Amazigh and Arabic, see Safi Moumen Ali, “Ru’ya jadīda li-al-funūn al-ghinā’iyya al-’amāzīghiyya,” in Al-mūsīqā al-’amāzīghiyya wa-irādat al-tajdīd: Majmū‘at usmān (Rabat: Manshūrāt al-Jam‘iyya al-Maghribiyya li-al-Baḥt wa-al-Tabādul al-Thaqāfī,  2002), pp. 69-83; see also Aomar Boum, “Dancing for the Moroccan State: Ethnic Folk Dances and the Production of National Hybridity.” In North African Mosaic: A Cultural Reappraisal of Ethnic and Religious Minorities, edited by Nabil Boudraa and Joseph Krause, 214-237 (Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2007); Brahim El Guabli, “The Absent Dimension: Anti-Racism in Mbark Ben Zayda’s Amazigh Poetics,” Review of Middle East Studies 56(2)(2024):171-188. doi:10.1017/rms.2023.24.

[15] This genealogy is based on Aziz Chamkh’s comments on social media and in TV interviews.

[16] Brahim E Guabli, “(Re)Invention of Tradition, Subversive Memory, and Morocco's Re-Amazighization: From Erasure of Imazighen to the Performance of Tifinagh in Public Life,” Expressions maghrébines 19, no. 1 (2020): 143-168. doi:10.1353/exp.2020.0008.

[17] Claude Lefébure, “Ousman: La chanson berbère reverdie,” Annuaire de l'Afrique du Nord 23(1984),2.

[18] Ibrahim Akhiyyat. Al-Nahḍa al-amāzīghīyya kamā ‘ishtu mīlādaha wa taṭawwuraha (Rabat: Manshūrāt al-Jam‘iyya al-Maghribiyya li-al-Baḥt wa-al-Tabādul a-Thaqāfī, 2012), 77;78.

[19] For a longer article about his life and achievements, see Ahmed Assid, “Ammouri M’barek: Ṣawt al-amal al-jarīḥ,” AmazighWorld, accessed 20 November 2021, http://www.amazighworld.org/arabic/history/index_show.php?id=46950; see also  Mohammed Ait Boud, “al-Rāḥil Ammouri M’barek: Tajriba fanniyya rā’ida—al-khiṭāb al-shi‘rī al-multazim fī iṭār al-taḥdīth al-mūsīqī,” Akalpress, accessed 11 Novemeber 2021, https://akalpress.com/5814-ammouri-mbarek-poesie-amazighe/; Akhiyyat, Al-Nahḍa al-amāzīghīyya, 78; Lefebure, “La chanson berbere reverdie,” 2.

[20] Al-Musṭafā Skanfal, “Min ‘Usmān’ ilā ‘Tchaikovsky’.. al-masār al-rā’i‘ li-bil‘īd al-‘akkāf,” Hespress, accessed 28 November 2023, https://www.maghress.com/alittihad/2081473; Mohamed Oubenal has discussed the distinguishing features of Ammouri’s music and also explained the importance of linguistic pride in the AMREC’s decision to establish the band. See Mohamed Oubenal, “Les défis de la musique urbaine amazighe : Le cas des artistes d’Agadir,” Researchgate, accessed May 28, 2024, file:///Users/be2/Downloads/MUSIQUETACHELHIYTNEW.pdf.

[21] Nabil Boudraa "Mourning the Loss of the Berber Troubadour Idir," Middle East Report Online, June 23, 2020, https://merip.org/2020/06/mourning-the-loss-of-the-berber-troubadour-idir/.

[22] Izenzaren, Usman, Nass El Ghiwane, Migri Brothers, and others all played at the Olympia in 1977. Idir had already moved to France then. In an email, Zohra Tanirt, Ammouri’s widow, has asserted to me that he never met Idir..

[23] Mario Scolas, “Ammouri M'Barek, le poète Amazigh...,” https://musique-arabe.over-blog.com/article-18170273.html; “Nostaligia Ammouri Mbarek,” YouTube, accessed 28 November 2023, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKOu4bzRNyE, minute 17.

[24] See Hassane Oudadene, “Rwāys and Tirruyssā: A Symbolic Site of Amazigh Identity and Memory,” Jadaliyya, accessed May 28, 2024, https://www.jadaliyya.com/Details/43446.

[25] Aziz Idamine, “Su’āl fāṭima taba‘mrānt ma ‘a al-tarjama muhdāt ilā al-ḥukūma,” YouTube, accessed August 18, 2021, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MbjvcWGRQbM.

[26] S. James Anaya. Indigenous Peoples in International Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 3-5.

[27] Paulette F. Steeves, “indigeneity,” In obo in Anthropology, https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780199766567/obo-9780199766567-0199.xml (accessed 19 Aug. 2021).

[28] The USFP is led by Driss Lachgar, the NAI is led by Aziz Akhennouch, the PM is led by Mohammed Ouzzin and the PJD was led until 2021 by Saadeddine Othmani. Except for Ouzzin, all these leaders are from the Souss.

[29]Norma B. Chaloult and Yves Chaloult, “The Internal Colonialism Concept: Methodological Considerations,” Social and Economic Studies 28(4)(1979), 85.

[30] Ibid., 86.

[31] Zakia Salime, “A Gendered Counter-archive: Mining and Resistance in Morocco,” Development and Change 53(5): 1038. DOI: 10.1111/dech.12726.

[32] See Mohammed Moustaoui’s testimony about Ammouri in “Barnāmaj tīfirās: Dhikrā wafāt al-fannān mbārk ‘ammūrī wa-ta’sīs mu’assasat mbārk ‘ammūrī,” YouTube, accessed 25 November 2023, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2fCBGQ-HaI.

[33] Assid, “Ammouri M’barek.”

[34] Amarg N Imazighen, “Izenzaren Chamkh: Ughniyyat a-Itizāz bi-al-aṣl wa-al-iftikhār bihi,” YouTube, accessed 28 November 2023, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CVvgYDSlZM.

[35] Immo-Farid Aglou, “Izenzaren Chamkh Abdelaziz Boughaba,” YouTube, accessed 28 November 2023, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwE8tScZ8vM.

[36] Aglou, “Izenzaren Chamkh Abdelaziz Boughaba.”

[37] The United Nations, “The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People,” UN.ORG, accessed 28 November 2023, https://www.un.org/development/desa/indigenouspeoples/wp-content/uploads/sites/19/2018/11/UNDRIP_E_web.pdf .

[38] Mohammed Ziri, “Qirā’a taḥlīliyya liba‘ḍ qaṣā’id majmū‘at izenzaren ‘abd al-hādī,” Ahewar, accessed 15 November 2023, https://www.ahewar.org/debat/show.art.asp?aid=391104.

[39] Aglou, “Izenzaren Chamkh Abdelaziz Boughaba.”

[40] Brahim El Guabli, “From Lalla Batoul to Oum Hamza: New Trends in Moroccan Women's Fight for Citizenship" in Amel Mili and Sahar Khamis , eds. Arab Women's Activism and Socio-Political Transformation: Unfinished Gendered Revolutions (New York: Palgrave, 2014): 219-240.

[41] Aglou, “Izenzaren Chamkh Abdelaziz Boughaba.”

[42] TIDAF, “Izenzaren Chamkh 2015 ( aRgan d'omazigh),” YouTube, accessed 28 November 2023,  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxdhYakM1DE&list=RDXxdhYakM1DE&start_radio=1.

[43] TIDAF, “Izenzaren Chamkh 2015 ( aRgan d'omazigh).”

[44] Hassan Id Belkacem, “I‘iān al-’amāzīghiyya lughatan rasmiyyatan fī al-dustūr ḍarūrī li’ayyi taqaddum aw taṭawwur naḥwa al-dimuqrāṭiyya,” Hiwārāt ḥawla al’amāzīghiyya (Casablanca: Dār al-Nashr al-Maghribiyya, 2004), 92.

[45] “The Moroccan Charter for the Protection of Collective and Individual Rights over Lands, Forests and Natural Resources,” accessed August 20, 2021, https://tbinternet.ohchr.org/Treaties/CESCR/Shared%20Documents/MAR/INT_CESCR_CSS_MAR_21327_E.pdf.

[46] The General Conference of the International Labour Organisation, “Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention, 1989 (No. 169),” ilo.org, accessed August 20, 2021, https://www.ilo.org/dyn/normlex/en/f?p=NORMLEXPUB:12100:0::NO::P12100_INSTRUMENT_ID:312314.

[47] “The Moroccan Charter.”

[48] Oubenal, “Les défis de la musique urbaine amazighe,” 104.