Decolonizing Sound: Moroccan Cinema's Sonic Identity

1. Postcolonialism and the Sonic Realm

To understand the sonic dimensions of Moroccan cinema, we must first ground our analysis in the core tenets of postcolonial theory. As you know from your background, postcolonialism examines the enduring cultural, political, and psychological effects of colonialism. In film studies, this has often focused on visual concepts like the "colonial gaze." However, these concepts have powerful sonic equivalents.

To refresh and formalize these ideas, please watch the following video.

The key takeaway is that postcolonial cinema is an act of "looking back" and rewriting dominant narratives. Sonically, this involves:

• Challenging the Sonic 'Othering': Moving beyond stereotypical or exoticizing soundscapes.
• Voicing the Subaltern: Giving sound and voice to those previously silenced or misrepresented.
• Reclaiming Linguistic Identity: Making the languages spoken by characters a deliberate and political choice.

2. The Politics of Language on the Soundtrack

The video's final point on language is one of the most direct and crucial ways the postcolonial context shapes Moroccan cinema's sound. The French Protectorate (1912–1956) established French as the language of power and administration, a legacy that continues to resonate. Moroccan filmmakers must consciously navigate a complex linguistic terrain that includes Modern Standard Arabic, the vernacular Darija, various Amazigh (Berber) languages, and French.

This is not simply a matter of realism. The choice of which language is spoken, by whom, and in what context is laden with political meaning. The scholar Peter Limbrick's work on Moroccan cinema offers a sophisticated way to think about this.

What Khatibi and Bouanani articulate is a rejection of a simple binary: they don't just replace the colonizer's language (French) with a "pure" national language (Arabic). Instead, they embrace the hybrid, multilingual reality of postcolonial Morocco.

When you analyze a Moroccan film's soundtrack, listen for:

• Code-switching: When and why do characters switch between Darija, French, and other languages? Does it relate to class, education, or setting?
• Linguistic Dominance: Is one language used for authority (e.g., in a government office) while another is used for intimacy or resistance?
• The Sound of the Unspoken: How does the presence of Amazigh languages, often historically marginalized, function sonically and politically?

3. "Vernacular Modernism": Forging a Post-Independence Sonic Identity

Beyond language, the entire aesthetic of post-independence Moroccan cinema was a negotiation with its colonial past. Filmmakers returning from European film schools in the 1960s and 70s faced a choice: Should they imitate Western styles? Reject them for a purely "Moroccan" folklore? Or forge something new?

Limbrick argues they chose the third path, creating a "vernacular modernism." This was a cinema that engaged with international avant-garde movements but adapted them to local concerns, traditions, and political realities. This negotiation is vividly audible in their experimental use of sound.

Let's examine some key sonic strategies of this period, as detailed in Limbrick's essay.

These examples are not arbitrary aesthetic choices; they are postcolonial sonic strategies:

• Juxtaposing the Global and the Local: The use of American jazz—the sound of Black American modernity and resistance—over images of Agadir's reconstruction or Casablanca's streets is a powerful statement. It bypasses the French-Moroccan colonial axis and aligns the new Morocco with other international currents of thought and art. It's a sonic declaration of independence.
• Creating a Critical Dissonance: The superimposition of a lively city soundscape over images of Agadir's ruins, or the use of "aural dissonance" in Smihi's film, reflects a refusal of simple, realist representation. For you as a sound professional, this is akin to a Brechtian technique—using sound to make the viewer critically aware of the relationship between what they see and hear, rather than being passively immersed.
• Reclaiming the Colonial Archive and Local Traditions: As Limbrick also notes, this same generation of filmmakers, particularly Bouanani, would also repurpose colonial-era footage, giving it new meaning with a new soundtrack (Mémoire 14), while simultaneously turning to local oral traditions—chant, music, and poetry—that were denigrated during the colonial era (Tarfaya).

This dual movement—looking outward to global modernism and inward to recuperate local traditions—is the sonic signature of vernacular modernism.

4. A Contemporary Framework: Sonic Pluralism

How do these historical legacies manifest today? The contemporary Moroccan soundscape is a dense layering of the traditional, the colonial, the modernist, and the global. Gilles Aubry, a sound artist and researcher, proposes the term "sonic pluralism" to understand this complexity.

Sonic pluralism is a powerful lens for your work. It suggests that in a postcolonial context like Morocco, there isn't one single, authentic soundscape. Instead, there are multiple, coexisting sonic worlds: the soundscape understood through an Islamic framework, through Amazigh cosmology, through Western acoustic science, through the memory of colonialism.

A filmmaker working in this context, whether consciously or not, is drawing from this pluralism. The sound design of a contemporary Moroccan film can be analyzed as an act of navigating, layering, and sometimes creating tension between these different sonic epistemologies. The work of El Haqed, which we discussed in the last lesson, is a perfect example: he asserts the legitimacy of the houma's soundscape (one sonic world) against the "festivalized," commodified sound desired by the state or international audiences (another sonic world).

Conclusion

This lesson has provided a theoretical bridge between Morocco's social history and its cinematic sound. We have moved beyond merely identifying sounds to understanding the political and historical forces that shape their use.

Key Takeaways:

• The postcolonial context shapes Moroccan film sound through the politics of language, where the choice to use French, Darija, or Amazigh languages is a significant aesthetic and political act.
• Post-independence filmmakers developed a "vernacular modernism," forging a unique sonic identity by juxtaposing international avant-garde sounds (like jazz) with local realities, and by recuperating local oral traditions.
• Sound design is often used for critical dissonance, challenging audiences to reflect on the legacy of colonialism and the nature of modernity, rather than simply accepting a realist depiction.
• The concept of "sonic pluralism" provides a contemporary framework for understanding the Moroccan soundscape as a complex layering of different sonic knowledges and traditions, and for seeing filmmaking as a negotiation within this plural field.

Preview of the Next Module:

You now possess a robust theoretical toolkit, incorporating concepts from soundscape theory (Schafer), film sound theory (Chion), and postcolonial sound studies (Limbrick, Aubry). In the next module, "Case Study: Analyzing Soundscapes in Moroccan Film," we will put this entire toolkit to work. You will apply these frameworks to conduct detailed, scene-level analyses of Moroccan films, integrating your theoretical knowledge with the practice of close listening.