UNDER THE AHWACH MOON

(sound-check study)

one, two, one, two!
this is my instrument, this is my sound.
one, two, one, two,
three! this is my space now.
just making sure
everything is fine, one more time, technique seems ok…
one, two, three,
check, check!
let the music
begin… under the ahwach moon!

This piece is a sound-collage made of various sound-check recordings in morocco. together with zouheir atbane, we spent several weeks travelling the country in 2013 for our project “an anthology of ears preservation”, researching about listening practices and the sonic materialities of traditional music. the sound-check is interesting as it is not yet a music ‘spectacle’, but rather a necessary preparation for it, in which all the elements are tuned together: instruments, amplification technique, musicians’ minds and space. the recording of sound-check situations reveal thus the social, material and spatial dimensions of music.

In this piece you can hear music instruments mostly from berbere (amazigh) regions including the lutar, the rebab, the bendir, the zamar, the raita, the qsbah, voices, as well as excerpts from the paul bowles collection of traditional moroccan music from 1959. You can also hear myself, zouheir atbane and robert millis rehearsing with this material for a performance which took place in marrakech in april 2014.

www.earpolitics.net

In a split residence in Berlin between june 15th and and july 17th 2014

lenght: 29’57 min
language: français
tags: field recording, morocco, ahwach, sound-check