Girls’s Poetry and Social Critique at Muslim Berber Weddings

Abstract

This chapter is the first of two in-depth explorations into the history and cultural background of a single women’s traditions in which the performance context can be understood to shield women from the criticism their actions might otherwise attract. This chapter examines the poetic performances of Berber girls in Riffian communities in rural Morocco detailing the ways in which their performances offer individual girls the opportunity to speak their minds on issues and concerns that matter deeply to them and about which they cannot speak in any other context. In the process, the polemics of musical performance in Islamic contexts and feminist interpretations of some Islamic constructions of gender are explored. The ethnographic material for this chapter is drawn from the fieldwork of Terri Joseph Brint, Katherine Hoffman, and Jane Goodman.