WOMAD

B'Net Houariyat

From Morocco

The hypnotic music of the plains and mountains of Morocco has been a key part of previous WOMAD festivals at Rivermead. Performances by the Master Musicians of Jajouka and the Gnawa Musicians were highlights of our 1994 and 1995 festivals. And last year the Tanzanian female troupe, the Wagogo Women, thrilled crowds with their vibrant dance and percussion. This year, the B'Net Houariyat, an all-female Moroccan group, should prove just as explosive.The six women usually perform at ceremonial occasions (as is customary with Berber music) and particularly at weddings, because the theme of their songs is love and desire. They have been singing and playing together for 14 years, and their leader, Fatima Enmans, draws on a huge repertoire of traditional songs.The impact of the voices is strengthened both by percussive backing and by dance. The drums beat out a changing pattern of polyrhythms with the women singing across the beat, using call and response to heighten the tension. The lead singer, Malika Mahjoubi, could have been born to sing the blues - any language barrier is surmounted by the emotional impact of her voice. Like the Gnawa Musicians, the B'Net come from a Sufi Muslim background, and their music is similar in that the singers aim to achieve a trance-like, ecstatic state.The difference here, of course, is that the singers are women. The group's name translates as "girls of the house", unmarried women whose status gives them free rein to sing about love in a male-dominated society. Their songs and movements are a symbol of free expression and, unusually, these songs come not just from the rural Berber tradition, but also from the urban areas such as Marrakech. There is no restraint in the music of the B'Net Houariyat: it is a celebration of the self and of love.This year, the group donated a track to ‘Football Africa’, a WOMAD Select memorial album to the Zambian national football team who were killed in an air crash in 1993.