Crossing Paths: Musical and Ritual Interactivity between The Ḥamadsha and Gnawa in Sidi Ali, Morocco

Yale Journal of Music & Religion Volume 2 Number 2 The Sounds of Processions, guest edited by Suzel Reily Article 10 2016 Crossing Paths: Musical and Ritual Interactivity between The Ḥamadsha and Gnawa in Sidi Ali, Morocco Christopher J. Witulski The Florida State University Tallahassee Follow this and additional works at: http://elischolar.library.yale.edu/yjmr Part of the African Languages and Societies Commons, Ethnomusicology Commons, Fine Arts Commons, Islamic Studies Commons, Musicology Commons, and the Near Eastern Languages and Societies Commons Recommended Citation Witulski, Christopher J. (2016) "Crossing Paths: Musical and Ritual Interactivity between The Ḥamadsha and Gnawa in Sidi Ali, Morocco," Yale Journal of Music & Religion: Vol. 2: No. 2, Article 10. DOI: https://doi.org/10.17132/2377-231X.1051 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by EliScholar – A Digital Platform for Scholarly Publishing at Yale. It has been accepted for inclusion in Yale Journal of Music & Religion by an authorized editor of EliScholar – A Digital Platform for Scholarly Publishing at Yale. For more information, please contact . 175 Crossing Paths: Musical and Ritual Interactivity between the Ḥamadsha and Gnawa in Sidi Ali, Morocco Christopher Witulski Ritual practice in Morocco is animated by a rich collection of music from diverse religious brotherhoods. All-night ceremonies from the ʿīsāwa, ḥamadsha, gnawa, and jilāla step outside the bounds of normative Islamic practice and engage healing spirit possession (jadba) in conjunction with praise poetry and supplications to Allah and his prophets, but each does so differently. This does not even touch upon the wealth of brotherhoods and sisterhoods whose devotional chants bring about a different condition: al-ḥāl, the extinction of the self into Allah’s oneness (tawḥīd). The lines between all of these groups, their ritual practices, and their musical expression can be blurry, as can their claims to legitimacy within the wider Moroccan Muslim community. Even so, sounds associated with each permeate local, regional, and national identity through the convergence of heritage and popular culture. Even the most historically marginalized or maligned brotherhoods pervade festivals, popular music of all types, and each other’s ceremonies. This article examines processions as sites of, first, music from private rituals entering public space and, second, arenas for innovation within both popular culture and ritual practice. In it, I draw upon my experiences with members of the ḥamadsha and gnawa communities in Fez and Meknes as they participate in the annual pilgrimage in Sidi Ali, a small town in the nearby mountains. By carving out distinct, yet intersecting, pathways for repeated processions, ensembles from these and other brotherhoods geographically map the diversity of religious practice within this town and its surrounding region. They also navigate the demands of clients and listeners by performing a type of ritual work that is related to, but distinct from, the all-night ceremonies that they host throughout the year. My research is based on two and half years of fieldwork in Morocco, including three visits to the annual pilgrimage in Sidi Ali between 2007 and 2013. I argue that processions such as the ones I describe influence and make clear the tastes of listeners. Whether religious insiders or noninitiated listeners, these audiences provide an opportunity for the musicians who animate the pilgrimage. Ritual practitioners, in turn, adapt to meet those tastes on performance stages and in homes during ceremonies. Not only do they occasionally use musical ideas from other traditions, but the Sidi Ali pilgrimage has given rise to brotherhoods going so far as to borrow each other’s spirits. Much scholarship about local Islamic practice in Morocco focuses on differentiation. In broad strokes, classic anthropological writings such as those by Clifford Geertz and Dale Eickelman identify generalities that make Moroccan Islam distinct from practices that are more Yale Journal of Music and Religion Vol. 2, No. 2 (2016): 175–94 176 geographically central: they place Morocco as a periphery.1 Other scholars, such as Vincent Crapanzano, Mehdi Nabti, Bertrand Hell, Deborah Kapchan, and Ben Yarmolinsky, look closely at specific practices, noting the wealth of diversity within local systems of belief.2 This focus on difference, manifest in either specific particularities or regional generalization, sets boundaries around religious practices that do not always match the expectations of practitioners, listeners, and clients. While the rising influence of reformist conservatism pushes back against local variation or innovation within dogma and worship across Morocco’s neighborhoods, many view the contested religious music and rituals of diverse local brotherhoods as compelling, even entertaining. To this end, the scholarship surprised me as I began the earliest stages of my own fieldwork. In my preparation, I had naively misunderstood much of the scholarship, failing to recognize the porous boundaries that exist between what seemed to be rigidly defined practices.3 I did not recognize the importance of daily life’s experiences to those who enter into ritual moments, no matter the tradition. I assumed—wrongly—that ritual and enjoyment are incompatible and that religious boundaries are firm and well guarded. My time spent in Morocco, as well as reflections on my experiences in religious communities in the United States, quickly corrected my perspectives. The processions that opened ceremonies and crossed each other’s paths in Sidi Ali proved to be powerful literal and figurative moments emphasizing this permeability. Furthermore, these processions reflect on Morocco’s import within the broader anthropological study of pilgrimage and religion. Whereas many ethnographers orienting a functional approach to religious life—those cited above, as well as Bernard Lortat-Jacob, Paul Rabinow, and many others—have found important context in Moroccan cities and rural areas, these noisy sacred moments simultaneously lower certain boundaries between faith variants, locality, and class. 4 They open the opportunity for a communitas while reinforcing social boundaries, a seemingly contradictory pair of activities.5 In a sense, the crossing paths that influence taste, attitudes toward entertainment within sacred time and space, and the commercial potential of pilgrimage sites live in a contemporary moment. The ways in which processions 1 Dale F. Eickelman, Moroccan Islam: Tradition and Society in a Pilgrimage Center (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1976); Clifford Geertz, Islam Observed: Religious Development in Morocco and Indonesia (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971). 2 Vincent Crapanzano, The Ḥamadsha: A Study in Moroccan Ethnopsychiatry (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981); Bertrand Hell, Le tourbillon des génies: Au M (...truncated)