ABSTRACT
North Africa has long been the cultural contact point between Africa, Europe, and the Middle East. Musical traditions of Berbers, Arabs, Sephardic and Mizrahi Jewish communities, Ottoman Turks, and the remnants of Portuguese, Spanish, and Italian coastal outposts have existed side by side, and occasionally intermixed, for centuries. Despite a variety of historical and local influences, the four countries that form the Arab Maghrib ‘where the sun sets’—modern Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Libyashare an art music tradition known as Andalusian music, which has its roots in the courtly traditions of medieval Islamic Spain. The musical traditions of the North African Sufi brotherhoods provide another unifying element. Yet many regions also maintain richly distinctive folk and urban traditions: malh
. u¯n from northern Morocco
and gna¯wa music from the south, sha‘bı¯ music from Algiers, rai from the region of Oran, h
. awzı¯ from Tlemcen, Jewish liturgical traditions from the island of Djerba, and
many others. Today popular musics of North Africa, particularly rai and malh . u¯n , are
finding a global audience and interacting freely on the world music scene with traditions of Europe and West Africa.
