Poems of honor, voices of shame: The 'ait&dotbelow;a and the Moroccan shikhat.
Item
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Title
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Poems of honor, voices of shame: The 'ait&dotbelow;a and the Moroccan shikhat.
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Identifier
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AAI3296928
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identifier
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3296928
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Creator
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Ciucci, Alessandra Maria.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Stephen Blum
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Date
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2008
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Music
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Abstract
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This dissertation explores the multifaceted relationship between a social organization based on patriarchy and a class of professional female singer-dancers known in Morocco as the shikhat. Drawing on field research conducted in the Atlantic Plains, I combine ethnography of performance with a critical analysis of the role(s) of women in Morocco so as to examine how everyday intra- and inter-gender relations are articulated in the context of performance. The `ait&dotbelow;a, the sung poetry which forms the core of the repertory of the shikhat, becomes the arena where politics and morality converge as the genre is re-evaluated and incorporated into the national heritage. This first-hand research fills a void in scholarship in the music, poetic and dance practices of Morocco, and complements extant work on music and gender in North Africa and the Middle East.;In this study the culturally relative complex of honor and shame is used to articulate issues concerning the status of the shikhat in society, to discuss the role(s) of women as entertainers, to investigate the role(s) of the shikhat in performances associated with life-cycle celebrations, to analyze the importance that the `ait&dotbelow;a has for the population of the Atlantic Plains, and to understand the motivations behind the re-evaluation of the genre. I carry out an analysis of this sung poetry in colloquial Arabic, and examine the significance of the texts of the `ait&dotbelow;a in order to investigate the tension roused by the incorporation of the genre into the national heritage and, consequently, the changing relationship between a musical tradition and a class of female performers.;I conclude that as the objects of a gamut of desires the shikhat take on multiple and often contrasting roles or images of women in Morocco. In doing so the shikhat constantly play and negotiate with the Moroccan moral system, articulate gender and intra-gender conflicts and the values of honor and shame, as they construct their persona inside and outside the course of performance. As entertainers who elude classification precisely because of the roles they play in reality, representation, and in the imagination, the quintessential quality of the shikhat is ambiguity.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy Restricted.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.