Amazigh Arts in Morocco: Women Shaping Berber Identity.

Amazigh Arts in Morocco: Women Shaping Berber Identity

By Cynthia J. Becker

University of Texas Press, 2006; 225 pp., bibliography, illustrations, index.

$45 cloth.

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Cynthia Becker, in Amazigh Arts in Morocco, tackles some interesting questions using her field data gathered over a number of years working in Morocco. The subject of the book is the intersection of art, gender, and identity among the Ait Khabbash, part of the Ait Atta, the largest Amazigh (Berber) group in southern Morocco. The author seeks to illuminate the complexity of women's roles in Islamic societies in Africa, particularly their role as producers of art. The problem that "women's control over the visual symbols of Berber ethnic identity grants them power and prestige yet also restricts them to specific roles in society" (p. 1) permeates the book.

Becker's fieldwork took place primarily in the village of Mezguida and environs, located in the Tafilalet oasis of southeastern Morocco. Her status as part of an Amazigh family is clearly evident, allowing her access to the household and the lives of women that might have taken a lot longer to achieve for a complete outsider.

Each chapter focuses on an aspect of the visual display of ethnic identity and art production among the Ait Khabbash. Chapter 1 presents the history of the Ait Khabbash as a nomadic group who have settled into village living over the past seventy years. After setting the historical background, Becker discusses weaving both as a performative act and as a finished product that constructs and displays ethnic identity. The weaving of tent panels on the horizontal ground loom as well as the process of weaving on and the products of the vertical loom are described. Changes in the textiles made and used by the Ait Khabbash are also noted. The second part of the chapter focuses on textiles as metaphors of female fertility. This section begins with a discussion of the importance of metaphor in Ait Khabbash society and initiates the repeated exposition of motif and metaphor. For example, beautiful women are likened to pigeons; pigeons are associated with the fertility of the land; thus a motif on a textile that is named "little birds" and said to resemble pigeon claws is a motif of female fertility. The gendered use of color and symbolism are also introduced. The author adequately describes the textiles that Ait Khabbash women weave or used to weave, although some of her wording is awkward. She talks about "thin" stripes where the word "narrow" is more accurate and uses the word "thread" for yarn, two very different things and a very common mistake. Her descriptions are supplemented by black-and-white illustrations, some of which are reprinted in color in the center of the book.

Chapter 2 considers the art of dress as a means of conveying gender identity. Body modifications such as male circumcision and female tattooing, the use of protective jewelry for children, and adult dress for males and females are considered. An extensive description of the embroidered head covering called tahruyt, worn by Ait Khabbash women since the 1970s, ends the chapter. Motifs of the natural world used on the shawls, i.e., flowers, trees, and animal tracks, are said to associate women with the natural world and thus symbolize fertility and prosperity. A very brief discussion of alternative styles of dress worn primarily by younger women ends the chapter.

The changing nature of dance performance is addressed in Chapter 3. Ahidous, a collective performance that consists of women and men dancing accompanied by drumming and songs, is played on the occasion of a wedding or other celebration. Change in dress worn for ahidous is described, as well as change in the poetry or songs sung. Ahidous performance is an arena where young, unmarried men and women indirectly express their dissatisfaction with restrictions placed upon them by custom. In recent years, a new style of dance, hiwawi, has emerged that is a hybrid form of Ait Khabbash ahidous and a form from the High Atlas mountains, using popular song lyrics as its base. Although Ait Khabbash women must now cover their heads while dancing and are not allowed free movement in the dance, the more explicit lyrics sung in hiwawi indicate some level of rebellion against expectations of correct behavior (p. 94).

The next two chapters are devoted to the wedding ceremony as public performance of ethnic identity and gender roles. The dressing of the bride and groom is described in detail in Chapter 4, as is the construction of the bridal tent and the accompanying songs. Each article of clothing and act of dressing is described and its symbolic importance is discussed, primarily in terms of the control of female sexuality and reproduction. The "feminizing" of the groom, whose hands are decorated with henna and who wears a similar headdress to the bride, is seen as an expression of female power and a symbol of gender cooperation necessary for the maintenance of Air Khabbash life.

The three-day wedding ceremony is described in great detail in Chapter 5, along with the songs that are sung. The activities of the wedding, e.g., the display of the wedding night cloth, the dressing of the bride and her hair, the sacrifice of a ram, all reinforce gender and ethnic identity, of both the individual and the group. Instruction of the bride by older female family members helps the young woman make the transition from living with her mother to living with her mother-in-law, now the new keeper of her sexuality (p. 160).

Chapter 6 introduces the history of slavery among the Ait Khabbash. Most of the chapter is devoted to a discussion of the healing practices of the Ismkhan, descendants of slaves captured and brought across the Sahara to Morocco until the 1930s. Ismkhan men perform the music and ritual that accompanies healing, particularly the casting out of spirits called jnoun. Ismkhan women are mentioned briefly as creating textiles and dressing in a similar fashion to the Amazigh women, thus participating in the creation of a group identity both united with and differentiated from the Ait Khabbash.

Contemporary Moroccan painters, both Arab and Berber and mostly male, and their appropriation and use of Amazigh women's art and motifs is described and assessed in Chapter 7. Increasing urbanization, political activities of artists promoting their Amazigh heritage, and the pressure on Amazigh women to assimilate with their Arab neighbors are also discussed. The paradoxical situation of male artists using the symbols of traditional women's arts while those same arts are fast disappearing is noted but not critically evaluated. These final two chapters seem to diverge from the rest of the book, whose focus is primarily on women and women's arts.

The strength of this book is the detailed descriptions of the components of the wedding among the Ait Khabbash. The transcription and translation of songs sung during ritual activities is an important contribution to the study of gender expectations, language, and lived experience among this group of people. The overall package, unfortunately, leaves something to be desired.

Becket's main point seems to be that Ait Khabbash women, because they are weavers of textiles and are charged with ritual responsibility, play an important public role in society, and that weaving gives women power and prestige in Ait Khabbash society. Paradoxically, the data she presents shows that the seat of women's power is their ability to bear Ait Khabbash children, particularly sons (p. 75). This power is controlled first by a girl's parents, who are tasked with preserving her virginity until marriage, and then by her mother-in-law (p. 160).

Weaving is a visual expression of the importance of a woman's fertility both in her own life and in the continued preservation of ethnic identity. Young women are beginning to question and rebel against the limited roles allowed them in Ait Khabbash society (p. 46), as evidenced by the new lyrics of hiwawi. If young women are questioning the narrowness of this role, then it makes sense they would not want to learn to weave, an activity that is intimately related metaphorically to reproduction. Becker acknowledges there is a paradox between being the creator of the artistic symbols of identity and being restricted by these symbols, yet this paradox is never fully explored or analyzed.

Another topic only touched on and a fertile ground for analysis is the growing conflict, especially among young women, between Amazigh identity and Islam and how this plays out through dress. A discussion of the public and private spheres, a concept invoked numerous times but never explained, would greatly enrich the book and give the reader a framework with which to evaluate the author's statements.

I find no fault with the author's research, data, or description. The use of song transcripts adds depth to interviews, discussion, and observation. Illustrations are, for the most part, well chosen and clear and it is obvious Dr. Becker has had extensive experience among the Ait Khabbash and in Morocco in general. But her data seem to be forced into a mold that does not quite fit. Monni Adams (1993), in her article on women's arts in Cote d'Ivoire, addresses many of the same issues brought up by Becker. She describes the ways in which men are said to "be in command and have the right to make all decisions" in both public and private spheres. She then goes on to analyze the ways in which women's arts of house painting, making and decorating pottery, and body painting of female initiates mark the domains where women exercise power, contrary to the prevailing ideology. Perhaps if Becker's data were analyzed more closely and more detail provided regarding what men do as well as the local ideology of men's and women's roles in Ait Khabbash society, her thesis would be more successfully conveyed to the reader.

BOBBLE SUMBERG is curator of textiles and costume at the Museum of International Folk Art in Santa Fe. [e-mail]

References cited

Adams, Monni. 1993. "Women's Art as Gender Strategy Among the We of Canton Boo." African Arts 26 (4):32-43, 84.