Embodying the Countryside in ʿAiṭa Ḥaṣbawiya (Morocco)

Abstract

Embodying thE CountrysidE in ʿaiṭa Ḥaṣbawiya (moroCCo) by Alessandra Ciucci As we left Safi and began driving along a stretch of country road on our way to Rabat, one of my female traveling companions asked me if I had a cassette of ʿaiṭa on me. "Why?" I replied with a certain curiosity. "Oh …," she continued, "I just feel like listening to it. I want to smell the soil (bghit nshəm ṭ-ṭrab), taste the countryside (bghit nduq l-ʿərubiya)." I was struck by her answer, by how she had articulated the desire to listen to this genre of sung poetry by analogy to other senses. For her, listening to ʿaiṭa meant to experience the countryside and, at the same time, to celebrate a rurality that for many Moroccans is an essential component of their identity. That day I did not have a cassette on me. However, the silence was soon broken by the opening verses of "Mal l-ḥbibi malu ʿlih" (what's wrong with my beloved, what's wrong with him); she and the others had begun singing, clapping, and rhythmically swaying their upper bodies as we continued to drive on that country road. 1 ʿAiṭa-a genre of sung poetry from the Moroccan Atlantic Plains and its adjacent territories-is regarded as the quintessential expression of the identity of the region. 2 Analyses of the texts of ʿaiṭa have shown that the use of a poetic language, able to evoke emotions through traditional imageries and by appealing to the senses, is essential to its affective power (