It is nice that you have come to hear more of my tales of travel in Morocco! If you remember, we were on our way to our first cultural performance and I was excited! We were going to see musical performers, belly dancers, magicians and a mock wedding! All of this over bread, soup, bastillia, cous-cous, almond cake and of course, mint tea!
The venue was a beautiful, old Moroccan house or dar, turned into a restaurant. Upon entering, I was hit with the scrumptious spicy smells of warm bread, meat and soup. Bright tiles in varying shades of blue and white covered the walls in geometric patterns that were a back drop for a low stage where a group of musicians dressed in traditional loose fitting white shirts and pants, were preparing for the evenings performance with their various drums, oud, lotar, garagab clackers, tambourines and other instruments. Carpets covered the floor and low tables and chairs could be seen ringing the center floor performance area in the low lighting of the restaurant.
We were seated and at the time the only patrons in the house. It was pretty early for dinner by Moroccan standards, 8:00pm. The performance began with a magician who performed various magic tricks with appearing and disappearing scarves, doves and a variety of other objects. He was good at keeping the audience attention even if the magic was pretty basic. He wore more traditional attire of robes and belts but the Nike shoes were a bit distracting! Two men who performed with clackers, large iron castanet type instruments, came out and amazed us for awhile with the speed and rhythms of the clackers. It looks like a fun instrument to play and would take some skill to master!
Then with live music from the ensemble on stage, the folkloric dancer took the floor next. She wore a long caftan interwoven with shiny metallic thread and tied at the waist along with a big smile. She encouraged several of us men and women to get up and join her. She taught us a couple of line dance steps, had us join hands and in no time, had us dancing together. Through all this, we were served different courses of our delicious meal. We even had a bottle of red or white wine and a couple of bottles of water for our table. We were having so much fun we hardly noticed a few of our party had vanished.
After the folkloric dancer, we were entertained by two belly dancers. They were both good entertainers but did not seem to have the joy or enthusiasm I am accustomed to seeing, whether an American or Egyptian performer. When I see foreign live performance entertainers I do seem to notice they have all the technique and ability, but the training in stage presence seems to be missing. I also know as an American, I am very spoiled by the high level of polished professionals I have the opportunity to see here and have to take that into account. I started to wonder what happened to my sister belly dancer I befriended in the tour group. She was one of the three people who had been spirited away. I was quickly distracted by the next group of entertainers, a number of men with hand held drums and tambourines dressed in the traditional white pants and tunics, wearing sashes around their waist and a fez on their head. They kept up a heart pounding rhythm on their percussion instruments, all the while jumping, dancing and performing gymnastics. It was a pretty amazing, action packed performance.
Suddenly, the room grew quite as a procession led by several elaborately dressed women with candles entered. Immediately behind them came our missing friends, also elaborately dressed and sitting cross legged in their own wedding box, perched on the shoulders of the “wedding party”. There were two women and one man in the formal wedding party. One woman was supposed to represent a Bedouin tribal bride (ah, there was my belly dance sister!), one a Moroccan bride and the man who was wealthy enough to wed both! It seems a man can have as many brides as he can afford so in order to save expenses, he might wed more than one in a single occasion! Well, at least that is how it was back in the day. (Polygamy is still legal in the religious sense with a number of restrictions and conditions but it is a rare occurrence in Morocco.) The bridal party was set down on the ground, they exited their bridal boxes and proceeded to the abbreviated ceremony.
The costumes were rich and elaborately adorned with bright metal threads, mozunas, and various decorative elements. The Bedouin bride was in the darker, more tribal colors and costume design while the Moroccan bride was in bright gold and white. The groom was also decked out like royalty with gold and white. All wore headdresses. The largest and most elaborate was the Moroccan bride. Her headdress was the size reminiscent of the huge Las Vegas style headdresses.
All in all, it was a beautiful and breathtaking display of finery and artistic hand work. We all had a wonderful time sharing in the celebration, ceremony and this little bit of tradition. It was midnight before we all left for our coach. It felt strange to be walking down the very narrow, winding cobblestone streets of the medina, surrounded by high windowless walls. How different it was so late at night when all was quite. During the day, even these back streets have foot traffic, animals, noise, life, but not now. After a bit of a walk, we emerged from the medina to our waiting coach where we all boarded and headed back to the hotel for a good nights rest in preparation for our next adventure in the deserts beyond the Middle Atlas.
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