The twalwil, yu-yu, or ululation of women, is a familiar sound to be heard in the towns and cities of North African countries, and yet, for men at least , it never easy to know who is making it. In Morocco and Algeria, where I conducted my field research, this call was made exclusively by women, when in groups, and could be encountered in diverse circumstances where high emotions prevailed. These included wedding parties, mourning for deceased relations, at women-only religious gatherings, wherever the structures of everyday life were in the process of being reconfigured, wherever women were distressed, excited or fearful.

Significantly, whenever such circumstances occurred in the public arena I found it almost impossible to pinpoint exactly which individual was making this sound. One woman's cry was usually joined by others in her company and either heads were turned aside or faces veiled by clothes or headress, so that, despite the stridency of the sound no individual woman could be identified as its source. Clearly, the precise meaning of this expression depended upon the circumstances to which it was a response. Nevertheless it was invariably a gender-specific and communal action, which indicated to ALL listeners that some kind of trauma was taking place.

I describe this phenomenon, not only because it is a common and characteristic feature of cultural life in the Maghreb nor because it occurred very frequently within the context of the women's religious activities I shall shortly discuss, but because I believe this wordless, anonymous and communal outburst of emotion to exemplify the forms in which many women in Morocco negotiated with the public world at large.

Much of my doctoral fieldwork was carried out in the large provincial town of Oujda, to the furthest North-East of Morocco. It had the reputation, nationally, as a far-flung, somewhat backward part of the Kingdom, with as many associations with nearby Algeria as with the state to which it belonged. Local Oujdis considered themselves relatively traditional in their ways, were disdainful of the Western-influenced materialism and general immorality widely held to exist in the big cities of Casablanca, Meknes and Tangiers.

In the course of my research I became involved in several distinct musical communities, including one group of women who met each week to play and sing religious music for an all female audience. This group called themselves the Aissawa and were led by a woman in her early sixties who referred to herself as the F'kira .

Every Friday afternoon, a time of the week when religiously devout males were worshipping at the mosque, around one hundred women from all over the town, but especially from local quarters, met at a small, walled enclosure. This courtyard was open to the sky with one small doorway which opened onto a lane near the centre of the ancient medina part of the city. As they arranged themselves and their smaller children on rugs, the F'kira and another six or seven other women seated themselves at one end of the courtyard and began to sing chants and play bendirs (a very common North African frame drum). The chants were repetitive and most were comprised of call and response patterns, so that, through clapping and singing, the audience became intimately involved in the performance. The themes of these songs were overwhelmingly concerned with praising local religious figures, and asking for their intercedence in delivering practical assistance to the gathered women. Often, what was asked of these spiritual intermediaries was quite specific.

e.g. 1 Excerpt from a common Aissawa chant.

'Call' 'Response'

Sidi Yahya a'tima baroud -Allah hu akbar

Sidi Yahya a'tima baroud -Allah hu akbar

Hayza n'zourou - Hayza n'zourou

Sidi Yahya a'tima l'visa -Allah hu akbar

Translation:

Sidi Yahya give us the powder -God is great (the force, literally, "gunpowder")

x2

Let us visit <his shrine> - Let us visit

Sidi Yahaya give us the Visa -God is Great

In this example, although Allah is acknowledged as the supreme authority, it is a local maraboutic saint, Sidi Yahya, (whose shrine has been the site of pilgrimage since pre-Islamic times, see Guitoni 1993) who is beseeched for both power and freedom of movement. It is quite possible that the visa being asked for, which was always for access to Europe, might well be on the behalf of the women's menfolk or children, as male economic migration was widely regarded locally as the most reliable way to better one's position.

Other saintly figures were also invoked, most local, such as Sidi Abd el Kader and Sidi Mimoun, whilst others, including Lalla Fatimah, the Prophet Mohammed's daughter, enjoyed more widespread appeal. Each saint was believed to be most efficacious in relieving particular problems, from infertility or illness to the unemployment or imprisonment of a family's breadwinner.

As the music and chanting continued, so a few women stumbled forward from the audience to a small space kept clear in front of the musicians. There, seemingly in a state of considerable distress, they danced in a stiff, flailing fashion in time with the bendir beats. As dancing became more vigorous and the women increasingly distraught, so they cried out as if in pain, or called repeatedly 'Allah, Allah' until, one by one they collapsed, swooning, into the arms of the other women at the front of the audience and the music came to an end.

This state of musically-induced spiritual intoxication was known as hadra, though this name was also given sometimes to the event itself. In the interlude between such pieces, the F'kira stood and exhorted the audience on the obvious power of the almighty, through the saints' intercession, to relieve the audience's problems. She also asked the audience to buy sugar-cubes wrapped in newspaper, which, she suggested, conveyed a share of the spiritual power, or Baraka, which the ceremony had generated.

The women's own explanation for what took place at the Aissawa was based upon an essentially magical understanding of misfortune. When, for example, a person suffered a whole series of unfortunate incidents, or all her attempts to better her condition regularly failed, it might be suspected that djinn, minor but malevolent spiritual beings, had come into her body, through some careless, polluting act. A typical example of this might be being splashed with dirty water accidentally, or through psychic contamination, such as receiving 'el a-n' - the evil eye, from a jealous neighbour. This diagnosis could be confirmed by visiting an appropriate maraboutic shrine, where a residenttalib, or 'diviner' (literally 'student') had the ability to identify such spiritual afflictions and prescribe a mixture of charms and rituals to either placate or exorcise the djinn. The Aissawa was one of a number of groups in Oujda to whom a sufferer might be referred for musical/therapeutic treatment.

One belief underlying this practice was that all music was able to penetrate the boundaries of the listener's consciousness and communicate directly with her spiritual and emotional nature.

When a chant relating to a particular marabout was sung, only those women who had visited the saint's shrine, or were afflicted with problems associated with him, were moved to dance, as the music served as an invocation of his authority over particular kinds of djinn.

This performance cycle was repeated, with thematic and musical variation, throughout the afternoon, different women coming forward to 'dance' for each series of chants. Of an audience of around one hundred to one hundred and fifty women, less than a quarter of them were moved to dance on any particular day. The others were present for social and entertainment, as much as therapeutic or religious reasons. Empathetic, and frequently physical, support was afforded to the dancers; otherwise the audience took part by singing, clapping and by discussing the proceedings with their neighbours. The atmosphere was almost always one of relaxed good humour, with jokes and light-hearted commentaries exchanged whenever there was a gap in the musical proceedings. Gatherings ended in the late afternoon, when groups of women drifted off home to prepare evening meals for their families.

The most obvious feature of the Aissawa gathering I have just described is its gender-specific nature. Women, effectively excluded from full participation in worship alongside men at the mosque, have formed a religious community with many practices and beliefs which vary from the received, orthodox version of Islam. The emphasis upon maraboutic saints as spiritual intermediaries goes against official religious doctrine, and men I knew frequently dismissed such practices as superstitious and ignorant behaviour. This begs the inevitable question of why these gatherings were not banned or discouraged by Islamic authorities, as they so very clearly went against official teaching. I knew the imam of a small neighbourhood mosque, whose own sister played the bendir for the Aissawa, apparently with his approval. I gathered from questioning him, and from similar conversations with other men, that although such maraboutic practices were not considered correct forms of worship for male worshippers, they were acceptable for women. The reasons I was given for this were often uncertain and sometimes contradictory, quite probably because sharp distinctions between male and female social practices in most other fields were so ubiquitous and appeared so 'natural' that this bifurcation did not usually demand serious analysis.

In some respects, then, women were allowed to pursue these practices, despite their heterodoxy, because they were at least quasi-religious. Also, the Aissawa provided a mostly harmless recreational activity at which the supervision of the female hierarchy of the neighbourhood was maintained. For women, apart from the slightly suspect religious reasons for gathering (not one suggested, for example, that attending the Aissawa was demanded by their faith) the institution doubtless provided a forum which both acknowledged their genuine concerns and offered a remedy which was both immediate and tangible. As each saint was associated with particular kinds of affliction, it was possible for the audience to tell, by noting who danced to which songs, the unexpressed grievances and ailments of their neighbours. Nearly all those who danced eventually swooned away into the arms of their friends and neighbours, who stroked their brows, loosened their clothing, and gently cosseted them back to full consciousness. It is significant that the dancers themselves 'could not control' their response to the music, and often claimed not to remember it having taken place. This, of course, absolves them of any accusation of self-pity or self-indulgence which might otherwise have been levelled at them. Aissawa could, then be considered to function as a communal support group, where psychological distresses could be safely discharged within a supportive, understanding community. The women who most frequented these gatherings tended to come from the poorer quarters in the city. They were often illiterate, had less freedom of movement than better-educated neighbours, and their prospects were often largely dependent upon their making a fortuitous, lasting marriage.

If a wife was divorced from her husband, a fairly common occurrence, she very often returned, with any children they had, to her parental family, hoping for any kind of marriage that would provide for her and any children she had. In such circumstances, where women were very much at the mercy of forces beyond their control, it was reasonable to turn to magical explanations and solutions to their intractable problems. In expressing their frustrations in such a way, however, they also manifested stereotypical gender characteristics which supported their unequal political position in society. It was widely held, in a range of popular discourses in Morocco, that the 'female nature' was very different from that of men. Whilst discourses around masculinity were associated with the public sphere, self-control and logic, the essence of femininity was accordingly taken to be irrational, superstitious and overwhelmingly emotional. Needless to say, such generalisations were fraught with contradictory evidence and viewpoints, but nevertheless were credible enough to sustain a multitude of polarising social practices. One heard that in 'modern' cities like Casablanca and Rabat women smoked cigarettes, drank beer and drove cars, but in Oujda such license was considered shocking. Here, the only women who (openly) engaged in such obviously 'male' acts were believed to be prostitutes, this contravention of gender boundaries provoking fascination and revulsion in equal measure amongst local observers.

For Oujdis, such blatant acts signified an utter loss of hope for a life with dignity and a complete break with one's community. Prostitution, professional cabaret dancing, and other morally disreputable trades, could not easily be carried on within the quarter, or even the town, where a woman grew up, and to resort to them meant to lose the all-encompassing support the female community afforded its members, even if, for some, it did offer genuine financial independence for poorer and less-educated women.

Rather than taking that path, most women took refuge in institutions like the Aissawa, which in many ways offered some respite from the frustration and anxiety of everyday existence.

Whatever the social or psychological returns, involvement in such practices and performance styles inevitably supported stereotypical views that women were 'by nature' more superstitious, and had less self-control than men. It is on these very grounds, of course, that women were not trusted to engage with the wider world and were discouraged from doing so.

In this way the process of stereotyping came full circle and appeared completely naturalised. On any Friday afternoon (except during the month of Ramadan, when many temporal routines were disrupted, if not inverted), whilst men prayed in the mosque and listened to the imam's learned discussion of Islam's sacred texts, women chanted together, danced and let out impassioned wordless cries to the open sky. In Foucault's (1980) terms, these women had adopted the 'subject-position' created by popular gender discourses and actively perpetuated these through such activities.

Nevertheless, it was difficult to listen to this music without regarding it as a loud broadcast of complaint to the rest of the neighbourhood. Like the yu-yu accompanying those moments of the ritual, when the audience seemed to empathise as a body with the dancer's feelings, the sound of such gatherings could be clearly heard throughout the quarter, though no single voice could be identifiable to listeners. Accordingly, the Aissawa communicated in two ways simultaneously. To the women present the event allowed a visual reading of the psychological and emotional well-being of their community, gathering a larger community than they were usually free to create and providing mutual support within it. To this extent the event served to express 'hidden' or 'muted' sentiments, similar to those described by Abu Lughod (1986) amongst Bedouin women. At the same time, through this communal act, the Aissawa send a loud signal to the community at large that they existed and that they had heartfelt grievances. Unlike the cases described by I.M. Lewis (1996), these ecstatic practices brought virtually no subtle political pressure to bear upon the male population which could be converted into practical benefits. Instead, this manifestation of community largely supported the construction of difference between men and women. One component of such gender stereotypes, held, or hinted at, by many men I knew, was that women themselves had close affinities with djinn and nature spirits. This partly explained their 'natural differences' and their religious association with cults like the Aissawa. It has also been suggested to me that, like djinn, men should be wary of too close a proximity with women, that their influence might be spiritually corrupting, that they could cause men to 'lose their reason'. Without a doubt this depiction served the purpose of, quite literally, 'demonising' women, further distancing them from the eminently cultural and rational masculine pole of this opposition. By identifying with this model, however, and making the most of this fearful reputation, women were perhaps able to intimidate the male community to some extent.

Although the Oujdi Aissawa gathering might be summarised as a non-conformist religious cult, it clearly also functioned as a site of negotiation between gender constructions. This ritual act of abandon, performed in the names of heterodox saintly figures, manifested many elements of the stereotypical female 'other'. In reality, many men I knew shared similar 'folk' religious beliefs, but their practices differed considerably. Although this discourse of 'otherness' had considerable disadvantages in Moroccan society, women exploited it as much as possible by acting collectively. As a group they were able to give moral support to one another and publicly (if anonymously) voice individual and collective frustration. Throughout North African history and perhaps particularly in Morocco, religious brotherhoods have provided the institutional structure for incipient political movements. Although I saw no indication that the Aissawa approached that kind of self-consciousness, it nevertheless served as a network and forum for otherwise isolated pockets of women. As a politically subordinate group, women's protest and resistance necessarily remained an understated and anonymous strategy, for fear of repudiation by the men they were dependent upon. The Aissawa, and similar religious 'sisterhoods' in the town, nevertheless displayed a complex musical response to local gender relations.