Culture and symbols

The culture of the Amazigh

Music, poetry, craft, festivals

A culture that passed most of itself on not in writing, but by singing, knotting and dancing.

Anyone looking for Amazigh culture is looking in the wrong place if they look in libraries. The memory lies in songs, patterns, festivals and handiwork. That has a price (much of it is lost) and an advantage: it is alive wherever it is still practiced.

Music

The instruments are few and old. The Bendir, a frame drum with a snare string on the inside that gives the tone its characteristic buzz. The Ribab, a single-stringed fiddle. The Gimbri or loutar, a plucked lute with three strings. Added to these are flutes and above all voices in alternation.
Regionally this looks very different: Ahidous in the Middle Atlas, Ahwash in the Souss, Reggada in the east and in the Rif. The Amazigh war dance form Taskiwin from the western High Atlas was placed on the UNESCO list of intangible cultural heritage in urgent need of safeguarding in 2017: urgent because hardly any young people still learn it.

Poetry

In the Rif the sung short poems are called Izran: two lines, often in alternating song, often by women, often about love, parting and emigration. They were not printed but kept. Anyone who collects old Izran today is collecting the memory of a generation that largely went to Europe.

Craft

Carpets with geometric patterns whose signs repeat and can be read: fertility, protection, water. Silver jewelry, often with the same shapes. Pottery without a wheel, made and painted by women. Wood, leather, plaited halfa grass. The pattern is rarely decoration alone; it is the second script of a culture that long had no first one.

Festivals

Yennayer, the Amazigh new year, is traditionally celebrated on 12 or 13 January; in Morocco it has been a public holiday on 14 January since 2024. The year count begins at 950 BC: a modern convention introduced in 1980 that refers to the Libyan-descended pharaoh Sheshonq I. 2026 is therefore the year 2976. Added to this are moussems, local pilgrimage festivals, and in the High Atlas the wedding festival of Imilchil.

Open in the app →