Nass El Ghiwane’s Moroccan Folk, Radical Politics, Forged in Paris
Paris provided the grit and opportunity for Nass el Ghiwane to hone a new sound that would rock the Magreb and Europe, writes Benjamin Jones.
Benjamin Jones
Benjamin Jones is a writer, music critic, and PhD student at Georgetown University who explores nationalism and popular culture in the modern Middle East and North Africa. Based on archival sources and oral history interviews conducted in Rabat and Casablanca, he traces the contentious legacy of the renowned 1970s Moroccan folk band Nass el Ghiwane. He was the co-winner of the 2022 MESA Graduate Student Paper Prize for his essay “Sudanized Folklore: The Roxanne Connick Carlisle Collection and Music of Sudan in the 1960s.” He is a DJ with a weekly music show on WGTB Georgetown Radio, in Washington D.C.