Moroccan poet Legend

the art of resistance

Al-Aita, one of the most important arts stemming from the Moroccan rural culture and an artistic means used in that era to resist the French occupation of Morocco (1956-1912), and the occupation worked hard to eradicate it and obliterate the Moroccan identity in general, and to silence the voices of the Aita artists who used that art in their struggle. Against the arrogant newcomer, by transmitting coded messages that only resisters who understand its origins and hymns can understand.

It can be said that the contents of the Moroccan art of al-Aita formed very special communicative symbols, through which the mujahideen in the mountains and countryside tried to transmit urgent messages about the movements of the invaders and their dwellings, so the French sought the help of traitors (Sabihi and movement) and regional officials such as Pasha and Qaid, to decipher the codes in a first stage , then obliterating the identity of this expressive form and marginalizing it in Moroccan culture at a final stage.

The French colonialism adopted its insidious and usual methods of distorting this art, by presenting them as marginalized women and rebels against conservative family and societal norms, and confining them to the category of "widows, divorced women and prostitutes".

The Moroccan writer Hassan Najmi collected and understood the description of the art of al-Aita with the following sentence: “That hot breath rising from within, through human voices, rhythms and captivating melodies, is the one who helped in the birth of oral poetry that continued to emerge from individual and collective wounds like a warm hemorrhage, and adhered to the selves and destinies of farmers, farmers and shepherds.” And the villagers in general, who are descended from a deep memory and from Arab dynasties with a distant, neglected, repressed and silent history.”