By Abdelkader Mana
Fonte: http://rivagesdessaouira.hautetfort.com/archive/2009/07/07/g.html # more 17/11/2009
My first encounter with George Lapassade back to the period when he was investigating Ben Sghir to respond to a double command: caid Bassou that of the economic and social division of the province of Essaouira, which wanted to publish the work of musicology colloquium (1980-1981) whose actions are subsequently published in the journal Transit Paris-VIII, as the lyrics of Essaouira. He was also responding to the request of his friend Dominique Bedou, a small poetry publisher who wanted to publish a book on the poetry of Essaouira as a "cultural hub".
I was teaching at the Lycée Akenssous of the city. One day in the early 1980s, the headmaster invited me to a meeting scheduled to 16 hours at the Chamber of Commerce, between George Lapassade, and connoisseurs of the city Malhoun. The meeting was caused by Georges, who was investigating Ben Sghir. He counted them on the group dynamics to further his research.
The origin of this survey, an article Hachmaoui and Lakhdar, summarizing the qasida of Lafjar (dawn) Ben Sghir without giving the text. It was after this meeting that George embarked in the investigation of poetic and musical traditions of Essaouira Area he led after the first festival of Essaouira "Music First" (1981-82). Once in Paris he faxed me the following:
"What shocked my mind Cartesian there he wrote, is that we have discovered that a certain book Saddiki (grandfather of prof. D history of the same name) that had exhibited at the Museum and "how" was actually dated from 1920, not 1870 as they claimed, pulling argument that the specification and content, to invent a kind of poetic galaxy souirie which had the patron in 1870, Essaouira, Moulay Abderrahman! That's what I contested a lot more than originally souirie B. Sghir. Indeed, this book contained various Qasidas collected (perhaps) by the grandfather Saddiki during his travels in Marrakech which suddenly became souiri! Given the impossibility of advancing in Essaouira, I finally decide to go visit in Marrakesh Master Chlyeh, host of a sort of Academy malhoun. He very well received, well informed and I think (but be sure) that the version of Lafjar which I then circulated in Essaouira came to him "
The whole approach of the ethnographic investigation of George Lapassade resides in the text: when he requested information on Sghir Ben, Ben Miloud the bazaar, it was sitting on an old trunk containing full qasida, including those of Ben Sghir! This is to circumvent this withholding of information, local reluctance that he was obliged to go to Marrakesh for the famous qasida of Lafjar (dawn)! During this investigation the forgotten words of Essaouira, Essaouira Ghorba the shoemaker, also refused to transmit the content of his "Khazna [1] George Lapassade until where after his death, his aging cobbler collapsed burying forever under the rubble, while the poetic treasure he kept so jealously.
"Lafjar" (dawn)
Mohamed Ben Sghir
By participating in this spring 2009 in Essaouira in musicology colloquium of the second edition of the festival Malhûn, the musicians of the town told me about one second Ben's death Sghir with the disappearance of George Lapassade, its discoverer. It was a flame that was extinguished. It was at George Lapassade indeed, belongs the merit of exhuming and disseminate "Lafjar" (dawn), the Mohamed Bin qasida Sghir, the poet melhûn of Essaouira, which had been found in a notebook dated 1920:
Behold the sky above the earth, the source of light
The inhabitants of the earth can not reach
See Mars, you who are indifferent
Its beauty is clearly the world
See Mercury comes to you, O traveler
Above the world, ignorance astonishing
Look Neptune which illuminates the desert
He went into its creation, the rich man who has everything. Behold Saturn
visibly coming to you
Over seven perfect secrecy
War of men, O thou who sleeps
See the movement of the stars
They lit their light shining, the ignorant.
And know the truth if you want to be pure
Lafjar (dawn) of a science that t'advient illuminated
Take O you who hear me and Yabriz Nikir
He who rules over the most cunning wolves
Whoever responds very quickly to the challenge
Must protect vultures
Is the hedgehog may go to war against the ogre?
known among the eagle hawks
He feared the slightest noise and fawn on mountaintops
Passing by Bendir Telemsani caves and beautiful procession
Let he who is neither weak nor boastful
Mohamed Ben Sghir What is a sword unsheathed.
On Wednesday, May 13, 2009, I wrote to Celine Cronnier:
I have been a few days in Essaouira to participate in the symposium on Malhûn - a tradition established by George Festival 1980. I participate in a communication on the poet Ben Sghir, "an enigma" on which George had investigated in Essaouira during many summers.
I write without an accent, because the keyboard does not contain, but also because I do not have to reason with emotion: symposium on malhûn, everyone was amazed by the heavenly beauty of dawn Ben Sghir that George had helped unearth and translate! Others who have used the "language of malhûn" entaient inaudible and voiceless because they spoke in a dead language and unusual long: only her singing makes life come to communicate meaning forget: this is therefore George, who had made life at Ben Sghir by translating a foreign language like French and modern! We need people to understand that the manuscripts of the Khazzan malhun _ (preservation) jealously in their counnaches (notebooks Concealed in old chests) are the only insiders able to decipher the meaning: George had thus helped to talk a cosmic poem written in a dead language, he is fond of Paul Valery: he was able to recite long poems this feverish French thinker all along the beach ...
is incredible! Celine Cronnier replied the same day. What is incredible? This "enigma" of which you speak, I was looking at just yesterday! Yesterday you were to pick up the thread of the investigation where George had left ... Yes, in fact yesterday I was reading the Journal of the reform DEUG of "held by Georges September 1984 to July 1985 ... Suddenly, a loud passage strikes me ... enough that I dream in my sleep ...
" 27 February. Last night, returning to Paris, I reflected on the "search". I do not feel authorized to use that term to describe my investigation of Essaouira on the song in 1981. It certainly was not a "scientific research": I had no power to initiate such a search, I did not know the old local dialect poetry, nor his spelling. I do not know anything more in terms of Andalusian song, or forms, or rhymes, or the topics devoted.
Yet it was a search: search for a lost poem, "Lafjar," Mohamed Ben Sghir, knowing already that when I'd recovered, I am unable to read, translate, understand. More advanced in my investigation, most doors were closed, people became more hostile, the more they lie and cover their tracks. And the more I became obsessed by the ghost of Ben Sghir: lost poem I was fascinated by his absence by his loss (as he was, but I learned too late in the trunk of an antique home every day that I was going to beg him to help me recreate this lost poem.)
There was some something exceedingly painful, as "obsession" in the sense that that word by theologians of exorcism. The pain originated from the obsession itself, this ghost of a poet who forgot me run in the growing hostility of the town I loved this city and I'm being loved. But my investigation showed me day after day, she did not love me, and she did not like its past, its poets. All this was reckless. "
I spent the night wandering, looking anxiously at what Ben Mohadmed Sghir which I know nothing. And today, barely out of my wandering, you m 'write his name!
I now have the same problems of translation with the songs of women (haddarates) than before with chants of malhûn forgotten, but I'm so happy to be back in their most comprehensive wedding songs which I had collected scraps at the dawn of the 1980s, when I first met George when the latter had embarked on its investigation into the "Word of Essaouira '(as a social discourse that is). I realize now how my time was larval survey, but I'm glad to see again operate the search feature that George had it installed so long ago. Not only that, but this survey enabled me to regain revived vivid memories of Rbatia a friend of my mother died a long time ago - in the mid-1970s - that I loved and whose image haunts me my whole life without knowing why? Yet yesterday haddarates taught me that it was one of the emblematic figures who have marked their secret history and, furthermore, she was a midwife. I am now convinced that it was she who helped my mother put me in the world! It was actually my second mother and I cherished for that reason without knowing it ... This in-quest has emerged as a new birth for my own memory, a sort of rebirth of Rbatia; my mother to Geeorges but also my mother would bring me and George the tea and cakes when at room from home he helped me to shape my contributions to its investigation. According
Rabi'a Hail, whose maternal grandfather, Ba-Zaid, was Moqadem Aissaoua of Essaouira in the 1950s:
"Rbatia was the grandmother of the city. It was both a midwife and the Moqadma zaouia of Hadi Ben Aissa. In Mouloud, there was organizing a moussem which were found the Aissaoua were also invited and where the Hamadcha .. After the sacrifice was offered to the head and guts Moqadma. On the third day of festivities, came the haddarates. It was the Moqadma who organized the Hadhra. "
This investigation was like a rebirth for the" forgotten words of Essaouira ... Latifa
Boumazzourh who is now 54, remembers that at age four or five years, she held the bendir coated fabric of her grandmother, she accompanied the zaouia of Aissaoua where Hadhra unfolded until dawn : She cites as Haddara, among other women of Moulay Omar famous oboist of Hamadcha, and Fatima Kit-kit, I knew in the early eighties when I was investigating the singing of women, the instigation of George Lapassade. She resided at derb adouar a deadlock evoked the gloomy rzoun, song forgot the city
O you who would go to Adouar
Bring with you the Nouar
The rhyme is a pun between "Adouar" (the name of the supposed impasse dark hide the beautiful girls of the city) and "Nouar (the bouquet of geranium and basil) .. In the early fifties, the memory was still fresh filming of Othello by Orson Welles in Mogador. In the evening he was seen often meditate on the great square of the union leadership. In the film, especially one recognizes "Tik-Tik" with his lute with ramparts of La Scala, the sea His mother had recited a song of woman where it says:
Why I left and why I return?! For each distant countries
slandered me
That road is long, the camels are tired but my
not continue to go ... The
qasida of Gnaoui
During the musical evening, I discovered the qasida of Gnaoui I do not know : It is ducheheïkh Thami Mdaghri (Mdaghri of the Sahara), who lived (19th century) many years in Fez and Marrakech: it tells the story of a Gnaoui to scarification on the cheeks falling in love with a gazelle and especially that falls into a trance by heartache The love sickness as possession by the beloved which one hopes to unify. And to cure it, it makes another call comes to a clairvoyant psychic!
Al Harb (chorus) My beloved
blames me my condition, knowing what happens
My cheeks are scarified and his
She radiates charm by his temperament Fire and mole.
Al qism al aoual (first part): That is terrible
the day when the mine went
Leaving me weeping over the ruins,
God calms the flames of his own that qu'abandonnent
They decamped the footsteps of stars
Ah, if I could accompany the glittering jewels in the desert
thousand fires my heart now wanders alone behind the mirages!
Lost forever, if there was this bell ringing,
This song, the big drums and cymbals of the Gold!
Al qism al Tani (Part II): What
My grief is great, the day the caravan set
Behind the distant desert rumors
The slightest noise arouses my sighs wandering
Gazelles are dispersed by wind
Finding myself lost I was told: "Who are you? "
" Slave Gnaoui scarified cheeks without remedy for his pain "said I
Burrows on my cheeks, for the flood of tears
For love, have enslaved them, my black skin
At their service, the j'attiser ash off
I irrigate the thirsty fields and I adjust the position I
consolidates inking tents were
I straighten those s'affalent
They then said: "This slave is useful, not so expensive for what it is worth"
Al qism al talet (Part III):
They put me in raising prices in the auction
Draft sticks out on the sand
Mine has designated another that I like
I fell into a trance,
foaming from the mouth, without taking on my state
They then said: "This one is possessed "
Al qism al rabi (Part Four):
My mistress brought me closer to her
M'encensant of benzoin and Wood cantal
Then the melk me has addressed her
"To heal it requires a sacrifice" he said.
advising him a psychic or a medicine man
Or a seer prescribing records
To her my secrets are unveiled
Smiling on me she exhaled her musk
me God does its fragrance issue
Al Khamis al qism (Part Five):
Because of it, I forgot everything I learned
And when I regained my senses, she again bewitched
I got sick and nothing can heal me
malhûn The poet was often considered a Mejdoub, and connoisseurs of melhûn are his "followers" in the sense that they do not have a simple aesthetic relationship with the poetry, but a ratio close to the mystic ritual possession. It is a ritual poetry, told me Abdelkébir Khatibi, who considers Sidi Abderrahman al-Majdoub as the best Moroccan poet until now. Vagabond mystic and poet, el - Mejdoub lived in the sixteenth century in the Gharb. His magical powers and his quatrains, often caustic, made him famous. Among his famous quatrains that in which he predicted the sinking of the city under the flood
"Essaouira perish by the deluge
a Friday or a holiday,
Marrakech is a tagine burning
Fez, a clear cut .... "
Commenting on this verse, a pilgrim turner spring once told me:" It is said that the Mejdoub was crazy. But everything he said happened. The eye sees what the ear hears. They say he was crazy, but he saw with the "eye of the heart." The eye - the vision of Majdoub - not just looking And is the "eye of the world," as Schopenhauer: "pure knowledge" ... He then practiced clairvoyance in a trance!
experience Sidi Boudhaab
Whenever possible, Georges Lapassade practiced participant observation from these brotherhoods of trance. It caused even "blue nights" to help them out, as was the case for blue nights in Essaouira Gnawa Festival (1980-1982) and the first Festival of Safi (1983), with blue nights Sidi Boudhab (marabout gold) ..
This animation was a visibility device according the expression of ethno-methodologists or a cultural analyzer. To understand the culture of Safi, he had to organize, participate. In the interview published later in Morocco-Soir on Monday 1st September 1986, George Lapassade took stock of this experience as follows:
"A pretty amazing experience," he said and that is worth being told. We obtained, with difficulty of the Festival Board, which organizes each night in Sidi Boudhab at the entrance of the old medina, after the spectacle in the castle of the sea, a night brotherhood. And very quickly the difficulties have accumulated: it was every night, with Abdelkader Mana, who was invited to the conference, but was primarily an activist in the popular culture, we should say every night I scan the rotten fish littering the place that protects the marabout. Then we had to carry the mats with the hope that people would sit in the tradition of the lila. Alas, the first night the place was invaded by a huge confusion in the curious. But we did not get them to sit down. We had forgotten that Boudhab Sidi Safi, is above all a place of Halka, including that of the Gnawa. And people Safi could not understand immediately that the same Gnawa now came at midnight to try to establish the ritual of Derdeba with trance and possession dances. Only at the end of the festival, like a miracle that young people in the medina have understood the project and supported it. A huge animated Jedba Hmadcha moved by midnight on the place of Sidi Boudhab.
This experience made visible permanently Safi as probably elsewhere, of an old culture of Medina, in which the popular trance and Sufism have an element of choice. This explains also the tremendous success experienced by the Maghreb, "Jil" for example Nass El Ghiouan. I found it to Tunis, where Constantine yet the old North African culture seems less vivid than in Morocco. I also found in Casablanca after Safi. Here, in Casablanca, in a narrow old medina, this culture remains alive and rooted. Perhaps, should describe this one day culture in the medina in Casablanca offensive context of modernity as a culture-cons. For all these reasons, I am glad to see from one year to another, as the Festival of Safi continues. But what makes me happy most of all is knowing that we have kept the program festival, the nights of Sidi Boudhab. "
31 August 1983, I participated for the first time moussem Hamadcha, taking the advice of George Lapassade, a newspaper route when I discovered in describing the trance rituals and its auxiliaries. In the evening I accompanied Arabi, the drummer black eyes exorbitant noting this about their adjuvant ritual
Hamdouchi, wood turner by trade, met at Sidi Mogdoul, said preparing his pipe of kif, "All fire that burns is not unclean. Previously, we hid the kif in the drum. The Moqadem said: "Smoke anywhere you like except in the prayer room. "We people of the hall, we need to smoke until our eyes are out of their sockets in order to sing and raise the saken (the supernatural inhabitant).
And it is these terms that I described the stages of trance:
For the first time members of the public fall into a trance. A young man of 18 years loses control of his actions. Another young girl rolling on the floor crying. She pulls her robe that is accompanying his sister and seems more surprised to be among men as the status of his sister. A butcher told me later that the possession of this girl will stop with marriage. The public observes with sympathy and understanding. Not as a pathological case, but as a person in contact with the supernatural. The girl collapsed when the music stops. The public rushed around her. Dakki, the young oboist of Essaouira said:
"Go away, she did nothing, only the hal, and bring the incense brazier ..."
. After having breathed the scent, it leaves his trance and goes to rest. By entering this
moussem I dreamed myself that I fell into a trance. By referring to the day after George Lapassade, he said: "You resist the trance state saver because you are westernized, but you give in to your sleep deep culture that is based on the hal. . In popular parlance
Moroccan trance hal said, meaning the state of one who is "seized" that is "owned" by the spirits and falls into a trance for that reason. A song of the Brotherhood of the hal Ghazaoui evokes in these words: The
hal, the hal, O hal those who know! The
hal makes me tremble! Whatever the
hal does not tremble, I announce;
O man! His head is empty
Its wings have no feathers, and his house has
not pregnant
His garden has no palm
One who is perfect, slander does not touches
Sidi Ahmed Ben Ali wali
Take us over, O our sheikh!
Sidi Ahmed and Sidi Mohamed
Have mercy on us. "The
hal is that higher energy to dictating Gnawa trance in the choice of a particular color, and that dictated at Sidi Abderrahman el-Mejdoub ecstatic his famous quatrains. The "Mejdoub," is that which is owned by hal.
Abdelkader Mana
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