Andalusian Music is the traditional urban music of the Maghreb – spanning Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya.
In 711, a Berber general named Tariq bin Ziyad crossed the narrow strait that divides northern Morocco from southern Spain, named it Gibraltar, and established the first Muslim claim on European land. Over the next eight centuries, a succession of Arab, Berber and other Muslim leaders would control portions of what is now Southern Spain. The lands that Moors controlled included northern cities like Toledo, but the core Muslim areas were Cordoba, Seville and Granada. This area became known as Al-Andalus. The remarkable cultural blendings and innovations, especially in architecture, music, poetry and literature, that developed in Al-Andalus until 1492 when the last Moors were expelled from Granada, resonates in present day traditions in many parts of the world. Al-Andalus is often celebrated as a time and place of tolerance when Muslims, Jews, and Christians thrived together. But periods of war and sieges from the 8th century on caused many Andalusians - among them poets, musicians, Sufi mystics, political figures and Sepharadi Jews - to flee the violence in Europe and to carry Andalusian culture to North Africa and the Eastern Mediterranean.
Musiqa Andalusia is the general term for the traditional urban music of the Maghreb - spanning Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya, and also of Syria - where communities preserved and developed Andalusian music since medieval times. This music was imported to North Africa and Syria by Muslims and Jews, who were fleeing persecution and the Christian re-conquest of Spain between the 10th and the 15th centuries, after centuries of Arab Muslim control. Early in the 10th century, the first wave of refugees came from Sevilla and concentrated in Tunisia. Waves of migration that followed came from other areas of Spain and concentrated in Algeria and Morocco. The difference in patterns of migrations resulted in differences between contemporary traditions, and in the development of five distinct national traditions. Each tradition has its own repertory, and the variations between them include differences in modal and rhythmic patterns, large-scale structures, instruments and terminology. Andalusian music is known as a'la (instrumental music) in Morocco, san'a (work of art) in Algiers, Gharnati (from Granada) in Western Algeria, ma'luf (customary, standard) in Tunisia and Lybia. Despite the regional and national differences, Andalusian music is united by some formal characteristics, norms of performance practice, a historical identity and philosophical heritage which as a whole, distinguishes the tradition from the music of the Arab East, known as mashreq.
Origins of distinctive Arab-Andalusian music tradition date back to the early 9th century, when the musician, singer and composer Ziryab (Blackbird), a freed Persian slave, was ousted from the court of Baghdad. Ziryab ended up in the court of Al-Andalus in Cordoba, Spain. There he founded a music school in which he developed a new compositional system based in a system of 24 melodic modes, whose cosmological properties were represented in a symbolic tree of temperaments. Each of the modes was associated with a specific hour of the day, natural elements, colors in the spectrum, and aspects of human emotional and physical conditions. Many of those associations are still respected by Andalusian musicians, even if they are not followed in detail in their musical practice. Ziryab also defined the rules for sequencing different song types, putting in place the template for the large-scale form of Andalusian art music in North Africa - the nouba - a cycle of vocal and instrumental music, the performance of which can last many hours. The nouba consists of one or two instrumental introductions and then a series of different vocal movements that move from the slowest and stately to movements that are faster and have shorter rhythmic cycles, at the end of which the feel is driving and danceable. While there used to be 24 noubas, each linked to a different hour of the day, the way in which certain noubas exist in each of the present-day national traditions defines some of the differences between each tradition.
Across the Andalusian diaspora, Andalusian music was cultivated in the palaces of the aristocracy but was especially embraced by Sufi brotherhoods and performed in both religious contexts as well as in coffee houses and in communal celebrations. Andalusian traditions are monodic and based on a subtle system of melodic modes called maqamat, all of which include intervals that are beyond the scope of the diatonic scale, and with rhythmic structures and range from free to metric cycles with distinct patterns of accentuation. The poetic texts, most of which belong to a literary classical Arabic verse form called muwashasha and some to the vernacular zajal were recorded in special collections, but until recently melodic content relied on oral transmission. Love, nature's beauty and the effect of wine are typical topics. Typical instrumentation of Andalusian music includes the oud (lute) rabab (one or 2 stringed fiddle) darbukka (goblet drum), def or tarija (tambourine) qanun (zither), nay (flute) and kamenjah (violin). In recent lineups, other instruments have been added to the ensemble, including piano, contrabass, cello, and sometimes mandolins and even saxophones or clarinets.
While the earliest Andalusian community established itself in Tunisia, Morocco retained the most long-standing ties with the actual territory of Al-Andalus, and in some Northern Moroccan cities whole communities identify themselves as Andalusian. In both Morocco and Tunisia, French colonial authorities saw value in preserving Andalusian music, and after independence, the music was officially sanctioned by the state. This resulted in sponsorship of Andalusian classical music by the state and the media, which helped to keep the music alive, but deterred innovation and experimentation. In Algeria, the reverse was true. French administrators tried to crush Andalusian music traditions and the religious conservatives in Algeria today oppose the poetic celebrations of wine and carnal love. This has given the music a kind of underground appeal that attracts young musicians to the tradition. In Syria the music lives in cities such as Damascus and Aleppo, though the tradition has been greatly influenced by Persian and Ottoman music. But from Libya to Syria, what has kept Andalusian music alive is its use in religious contexts, especially the Sufi lodges.
In Syria, the most famous singers of Andalusian music are Sabri Moudallal, who began his career as a muezzin, and the hugely popular singer Sabah Fakri; singer Abed Azrie experiments with Arabo-Andalusian crossovers with flamenco. Morocco has a tremendously active scene of Andalusian music, with prominent local orchestras such as the Orchestra of Fez and the Orchestra of Tangier; traditional singer Amina Alaoui has also received fame in the West. Tunisia has a variety of ensembles, ranging from that of the Rashidya Institute, which has been prominent in the preservation of Andalusian music of the 20th century, to the experimental all women's band Firqat El Azifat - which mixes a traditional Andalusian lineup with Western strings and piano. Nassima of Algeria is noted for her renditions of the san'a tradition, which in Algeria has been associated with males, while Habib Guerroumi has tackled the Andalu-Algerian repertoire with solo voice and oud accompaniment.-Nili Belkind
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