Sunday, June 10, 2007

Where the West meets the East



Hey!

I'm back from Casablanca, where I took part in a conference for indie magazines. It appears that there is an upcoming and thriving hiphop scene in Morocco. While some acts/MCs follow commercial h-hop stirring towards all that fucked-up bling attitude, there is some really interesting and original stuff with references to traditional Mahgreb music. Some of it, which is particularly close to suffi's spiritual music, is called issawa. MCs freely mix French with a kind of Arabian street slang.

I would like to share some groovy tracks from the CDs I bought in a market in Casablanca.

As far as I know, H-Kayne is the most successful Moroccon h-hop crew, with remarkable production qualities and cool rapping skills. This particular song had a huge dance response in a local resto where the conference's participants where dining.

H-Kayne - Issawa Style

Casa Crew, as their name suggests, is from Casablanca, and they seem to be quite popular there.


Casa Crew - La Slam La Klam


And here is a crew from another Moroccon city - Fes.


Fes City Clan - Arde L'baisse Nass



During the conference Frederic Galliano had an interesting presentation about Kuduro music - an electronic ghetto music from Angola - but this topic deserves a separate entry.

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