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Berber music is that music that has played, and continues to play, an important role in Berber life. Often linked to poetry, dance, and movement, the music among the Berber people involves the entire community during certain times of the year (as dictated by agricultural life) and at important moments of human life. It manifests itself differently, however, depending on the region, the natural environment, and the way in which a Berber community has developed alongside Arab and African population…

Aḥwash is a genre of singing and dancing emblematic of the tashlḥiyt-speaking Berbers of the Anti-Atlas and western and central High Atlas in Morocco. Performed in the open air during the mass village gatherings that punctuate agricultural, social, and religious life (marriages, circumcisions, and pilgrimages to the tombs of saints), it consists of improvised exchanges between individual poet-singers as well as choral singing in unison. The poet-singers, who must display mastery of both the vocal art and t…

Ladkar (sg. dhikr, “recalling”) refers to ritual songs of a sacred nature in the Tashlhiyt speaking part of the Moroccan Atlas (the western and central part of the High Atlas, the Anti-Atlas, and the Sūs plain). The verses of these songs are delivered in a combination of Tashlhiyt and Arabic. They are performed without musical instruments by elderly men or women on various occasions relating to the religious calendar and the life of rural communities. On certain religious holidays, men returning from mosques will sing specific ladkar while stopping at certain places of local impo…

Aḥidus is a genre of singing and dancing emblematic of the Tamazight-speaking Berbers of the Middle Atlas and eastern High Atlas of Morocco. Aḥidus is performed during important festivities, such as marriages and circumcisions, and is centred on sung group dance and improvised poetic jousting between poet-singers, who have to master the vocal art as well as the prosody peculiar to this oral tradition. Men and women form two lines, facing each other or side by side, shoulder to shoulder. The general movement may be undulating with sudden deep bows or bendings…