This new episode of the series Off the Map takes you to Casablanca, behind the scenes of a musical theater troupe. Directed by Ghassan El Hakim, it decided to pay homage to the sheikhats, popular singers of the past who practiced the aïta song. A film by Jessy Nottola.
A dozen men, in satiny costumes embellished with embroidery, made up and adorned with jewellery, have a blast on stage. Dressed as a woman, but with the beard or mustache they wear in everyday life, they pay homage to an old Moroccan tradition, the aïta – a poetic and popular song from the countryside, which tells the daily life of the Moroccans. It was women who made it most famous when the aïta passed from the countryside to the cities of the kingdom, singing at weddings and other traditional celebrations, and for some in the evenings of large families. And it is this heritage that the Kabareh Cheikhats brings up to date. Ghassan El Hakim, who returned to Morocco after his studies in Paris, started working on this project in 2014 and three years later his kabareh went on stage for the first time. It is he who guides us in this film, fifth episode of the series Off the Mapto meet Casa, a “slightly punk” town, and to discover the troupe, exclusively male, passionately turned towards these female artistic figures that are the sheikhats.
Jessy Nottola, the director of the film, heard about the Kabareh Cheikhats and his curiosity was immediately piqued: “I said to myself: Ouaouh guys who cross-dress in a society like that of Morocco, why do they do that? What does it mean ? A few phone calls later with Ghassan El Hakim, here he arrives in Casa, the economic capital, as the troupe is preparing to give a concert. Rehearsals, car trip to Rabat, backstage dressing and make-up, then going on stage: ” Close the curtain / put out your cigarette, Oh my God! make me the lunar crescent that will match your shadow sings in the spotlight Ghassan El Hakim in the middle of his band.
As he explains in the film: The real birth of Kabareh Cheikhats is when we played (for the first time). The day before I was asleep, and I said to myself: you are still a bit crazy to do that. You put ten people on stage, dressed as women and made up, and I said to myself: we are going to be stoned. There is a second voice that says to me: but what do you actually know about it? You’re doing nothing wrong (…) As during rehearsals I was playing and singing, I told myself that I was going to go on stage so as not to leave them alone if they were stoned, I’m going to take the stone too ».
Venerable sheikhdoms
Certainly, in a society where “manly virility” is magnified, one could fear negative reactions. But at the same time, as Jessy Nottola explains: ” I remember that the sheikhs to whom they pay homage by dressing like them, it’s a very old story: it also survived the colonists who nevertheless had removed many things, and it’s been a good century since this feminine disguise has been tolerated in Morocco. Someone like Bouchaib El Bidaoui, actor and singer, imitated these women. Ghassan had been struck by falling on archive images from the 60s, those of the program that El Bidaoui hosted on TV and which amused everyone ».
It is by wanting to revive this tradition, that of the sheikhs and the men who, dressing like them, take up their often transgressive songs (evoking everyday life, the failings of society, the abuse of power, and gallant or ribald subjects ), that Ghassan El Hakim set out to search, to find old repertoires, those from before the influence of Egyptian films. We also see him in the film, on the terrace of La Parallèle, the art school he founded, talking to his troupe about this Egyptian way of singing ” which made us forget the essence of the aïta, that is to say the speaking-singing “. Because there is in these songs a part of the memory and the popular history of Morocco, the one that finally tells a people better than the chronology of the facts and gestures of the greats of this world.
Obviously, we also think of the song of the médahates which, carried by the Algerian sheikhs and sheikhas, will eventually give birth to raï, and of which Cheikha Remitti was one of the most emblematic figures. She too, like her sisters in Morocco, will have been adored as much as despised. ” Often the sheikhdoms were marginalized. There was in their songs mockery, gallant poetry, vulgarity too…(…) and when men cross-dress to sing, it’s like when the clown takes on the clown’s costume to play the clown… dressing as a sheikhat allows you to say things that you cannot easily say in other contexts ».
Ghassan El Hakim and his friends, since they went on stage bringing back the poetic ghosts of the sheikhdoms of yesteryear, have transported their show not only in their country, but have made these venerable shameless ladies shine beyond the shores of the Mediterranean (in France, Belgium, the United Kingdom, etc.).
Enter the world of this sung theater troupe: just go to the PAM Youtube channel (where you can find the other numbers from season 1 ofOff the Map).
