Aicha
Tangier-America Day! (and my 1st academic conference, ever)
As it happened, the US Cultural Attaché in Morocco caught Nacim and Zakaria’s performance at the Fulbright Symposium (see previous post for videos). A week later, the American Embassy in Rabat contacted me to help organize a fusion performance for Tangier-America Day in – you guessed it – Tangier. I happily obliged. The idea was to showcase American and Moroccan collaboration, so we brought together Nacim Haddad, Zakaria Aktoui, Aicha (a Watson Fellow from the States/phenomenal singer), and myself. Aicha brought a soul-stirring addition of jazz vocals and spoken word to a Gnawa 3-piece band: Nacim on the haj houj, Zakaria on the qraqeb, and yours truly on the tabla (hand drums). The result was quite a spectacle (YES, that was a double entendre in French!), and we even had the honor of playing for the US Ambassador, Samuel Kaplan, and his wife Sylvia. Believe it or not, Zakaria did his first ever Gnawa toe touch less than a foot away from them. Check it out. Oh yeah, we called ourselves Gnawa Voyageur…and Zakaria and I just might be the greatest dance duo in Tangier-America Day history (see video 3).
Here’s the opener, a variation on “Bu Lila. Aicha comes in with the 2nd chorus on English:
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