TALIM Director's Blog

Tarab Tanger 2013

Get ready for another Tangier first: next week, at Tarab Tanger 2013, the annual festival of world traditional music will feature a North American group for the first time - Libana, an all-women ensemble based in the US.

In part thanks to a grant from the cultural office at the American Embassy in Rabat, Libana will perform in Tangier, Tetouan, and Rabat, their first tour in Morocco.  Since 1979, Libana has performed in numerous venues throughout North America, and in a number of international concerts.

We are especially happy that Libana is coming to Tarab Tanger, which, among Moroccan music festivals, maintains a better sense of "traditional" in its mix of Moroccan and international performers.  That doesn't mean it is staid: we are also looking forward to another of next week's international acts: "Samurai-Flamenco," an intriguing fusion of Spanish dance with sword by a Japanese performer.

Tarab Tanger: 27 - 30 June, with Libana performing Saturday 29 June at 9:00 PM.

Paul Bowles' Living Legacy in Tangier

Belgium's francophone classical music FM station, Musiq3, has just aired an in-depth (hour and a half) special on Paul Bowles (click for podcast), and has provided us a photo of an interview at TALIM (courtesy producer Camille de Rijck), along with a vignettes of other Tangier cultural landmarks.

We're happy to be included among interviews with literary figures associated with Bowles: Claude Nathalie Thomas, his translator into French; Daniel Rondeau, until last month French ambassador to UNESCO and author of a book on Tangier; Mona Thomas, author of "Tanger 54;" and Simon-Pierre Hamelin, author and manager of Tangier's great bookstore, Librairie des Colonnes.

The interviews are nicely interspersed with Tangier soundscapes and a mix of Bowles compositions, his narration of excerpts from short stories, and selections from the Library of Congress Moroccan traditional music collection.  Just like the iPod loop playing in our Paul Bowles wing.

The program gave us a chance to talk about Bowles as a man of music, reflected in the "Music and Other Muses" theme of the broadcast, and very much a part of the Legation museum's approach to Bowles.

Bowles - his music as much as his writing - continues to be a draw for cultural broadcasting.  We've reported before on several European (German, British, and Swiss) programs, as well as Radio Tangier's special on Bowles' Moroccan recordings.  In Berlin, Swiss sound artist Gilles Aubry is preparing a exhibit on Bowles' work to preserve Morocco's musical heritage, and in the US, Rounder Records is working with the Library of Congress to publish selections from the 1959 recordings that TALIM had digitized during the Paul Bowles Centenary in 2010.

IBM's Cookie Class Road to Development

Photo of IBM Corporate Volunteers and Tangier NGO reps (Misha Santa Barbara)

For the past month, Tangier has been home to an international group of corporate social volunteers.  IBM's Corporate Service Corps has sent 9 volunteers - all from IBM's worldwide operations, from Rio to Tokyo - to Tangier, fanning out into three teams with three different non-profit associations.  Organized by the Morocco office of CDC Development Solutions, the teams have been working with AMED, a university-based group active in sustainable development, the TMSA Foundation, the corporate social responisbility arm of the Tangier-Med port, and FTAM (Fondation Tanger al-Medina), TALIM's partner in the Arabic literacy program for the women of Tangier's medina.

Though TALIM hosted the kickoff event for the entire IBM contingent (photo at top), we've been especially closely involved in the work of the FTAM team: Misha Santa Barbara from the Czech Republic (and IBM's Atlanta office); Lavinia Frota Flach from Brazil, and Ryosuke ("Ryo") Sawazaki from Japan (photo at right, with Mohammed Hammich of the Tangier acrobats, one of the community artistic groups at the FTAM-sponsored cultural center of Borj El Hajoui).

Painstakingly interviewing members of FTAM, the team came to form an accurate picture of the foundation and its challenges.  Through a series of facilitated workshops with the leadership of FTAM, IBM's corporate volunteers used their experience in management to stimulate frank discussion of impediments that have prevented the foundation from reaching its full potential.

FTAM's group has chronicled their work in blog posts, including two (Lavinia's and Misha's) on their work with the women of a spinoff cooperative from our Arabic literacy program. They unearthed a great Moroccan variant on MBWA, management by walking around - "work and you will be strong; sit and you will stink."  The women of the cooperative are certainly hard-working, though concepts like pricing to cover their costs sometimes elude them. The IBM team provided them with another idea to augment their income: offer cookie-baking classes to foreign visitors willing to pay to get hands-on training.  They tested out the concept in a fun cooking class.

Sometimes it takes an interested outside look to help spur a fresh approach, which has helped FTAM focus on its core values, and the strategy necessary over the medium to long term to achieve its objectives.  And we are happy to find an interested partner in IBM, which is looking at the possiblities of adapting its online literacy program for use in our literacy classes.

Performing Tangier 2013

Once again, Tangier's International Center for Performance Studies brings off a well-attended conference, replete with book presentations, concerts, debates, and of course, performances.

TALIM was pleased to serve as the venue for the kick-off evening, which included our friend Dr. Carol Malt presenting her latest book, Moroccan Museums as Agents for Women's Empowerment: A Study of Museums in Thirty-Two Cities (2013, Mellen Press).

The evening continued with a concert under the arches off our courtyard, music courtesy Younes Fakhar, oud virtuoso, with his "Moroccan Mozart" repertoire.  It was good to have Younes Fakhar back - he performed at our 2011 Ramadan concert.  Photo courtesy Abdelaziz Khalili, ICPS member and publicist.

Every year, Dr. Khalid Amine of Abdelmalek Essaadi University, Founder and President of ICPS, pulls together this international gathering of theatre and performance experts - academics, writers, and performers - in a number of venues.  We are honored to be partners with ICPS.

Last year's ICPS-TALIM collaboration resulted in a great one-woman show dramatizing true WW II Legation stories, which we are pleased to say has had a US reprise at the University of Alabama. 

What Would the Sultan Think? Save the Legation

Legation Pavilion by Terry Connor

The following Letter to the Editor has just been published in the May issue of the Foreign Service Journal, and after a few "attaboys" from FSJ readers, we're sharing it.  Just like 19th century Consuls who wrote to the State Department about the "considerable diplapidation" and "ruinous" condition of the Legation, the response to our repeated warnings about the state of the crumbling Pavilion building must have been sent by clipper ship.  We're still waiting.

- - - - - - - - - - -

To the Editor:

The mail gets to us slowly here in the medina, so I am only now able to comment on the excellent December 2012 article by Dr. Jane Loeffler on "Beyond the Fortress Embassy."  As the director since summer 2010 of TALIM, the Tangier American Legation Institute for Moroccan Studies, I have come to appreciate what Ambassador Barbara Bodine, quoted in the article, calls "embassies integrated with their surroundings and culture."

You can't get more integrated than the American Legation, which is not only nestled in the medina's pedestrian streets, but actually bestrides "America Street" and is built over that same street.  That was the American way of diplomacy in Morocco from the 1790s to the early Sixties.  The Legation is the only US National Historic Landmark abroad, by virtue of the its status as the first American diplomatic property, a gift of the Sultan of Morocco in 1821.

The October 1932 issue of the Foreign Service Journal carried a story about the then brand new "Moorish Pavilion" annex of the Legation, which author Honor Bigelow described as "one of the most noteworthy" American diplomatic buildings of the era.  Photos of that same Pavilion grace OBO publications highlighting the Secretary of State's Register of Culturally Significant Properties, or the new public-private partnership, the Fund to Conserve United States Diplomatic Treasures Abroad.  It is a very photogenic building.  Until you look close.

More than eighty years after Congress appropriated $22,000 to build the Pavilion, this diplomatic treasure is at risk.  Major structural fissures, water damage from leaking roofs, rotting wood, etc. threaten what is a repository of the best that artisans from across the Maghreb could produce - mashrabiyya screens on the windows, intricately painted wooden ceilings, zellij floor tiles.

As a living embodiment of citizen public diplomacy, the Legation is also a symbol of America's engagement with the Arab, African, and Muslim worlds, dating back to the very beginning of our country (Sultan Sidi Abderrahman recognized "the Americans" as Moroccan partners in December 1777, when George Washington was hunkering down in Valley Forge).

OBO, the Fund to Conserve, and historic preservationists would do well to band together to "Save the Legation Pavilion," perhaps a rallying cry for 2013. What could be more important than to save this example of America's diplomatic heritage - from a time when "fortress embassy" meant a solid oak door and a deadbolt lock - in such a crucial region of the world.

Sultan Moulay Suleiman, our benefactor in 1821, would expect nothing less of the United States.

Gerald Loftus
Tangier, Morocco

Historic Houses of American Diplomacy

Today's outreach event was on familiar territory: DACOR Bacon House, the headquarters of an association of American diplomatic and consular officers in Foggy Bottom, the quaintly-named neighborhood of Washington now home to institutions like the OAS, the IMF and World Bank, George Washington University, and, of course, the US State Department.

Bacon House, about the same age (early 19th century) as the Tangier American Legation, is one of the few vestiges of that red brick, cobblestoned era when Washington was a sparsely populated upstart compared to stately Georgetown or Alexandria, Virginia.  It's where I stay when back in Washington, literally a home away from home.

The audience composed of retired and active ambassadors and diplomats and USAID officers was receptive to the combination of "Legation tales" and progress reports on current cultural diplomatic efforts that has become a staple of presentations on TALIM.

DACOR Bacon House is the only place in the United States, to my knowledge, that shelters a "piece of the Legation" - a massive cedar gate that was discarded and saved during an Eighties renovation project.  I wrote about it a couple of years ago.

We sold a few copies of Enchantment today, and among many friends present, I reconnected with the former President of the Middle East Institute, a previous boss on my second Foreign Service posting.  All in all, a pleasant time was had, and TALIM now has a number of new friends, converts to the cause of "Save the Pavilion," our rallying cry for 2013.

Morocco - US Strategic Dialogue at TALIM April Seminar

April Seminar, 2013

The Morocco - United States Strategic Dialogue

Tangier American Legation Institute for Moroccan Studies 

This year, our annual April Seminar had a decidedly political flavor, so it was appropriate that it be launched at a sufficiently high level.  US Ambassador to Morocco Samuel Kaplan opened the seminar at a time of unusual - and uncharacteristic - tension between the two old allies.  The chairs that remained empty at the seminar about the bilateral Strategic Dialogue had all been slated for Moroccan speakers.

Quel dommage. The entire point of a strategic dialogue is that countries espouse their own national interests, and see where those interests converge.  We missed an opportunity to hear a definitive Moroccan explication of their country's firm position on a matter of vital national interest.

Moroccan dissatisfaction with a perceived change in American policy over human rights reporting in the Sahara marked the proceedings, mostly by a no-show of a number of officials and other invited speakers.  Quite a change in atmosphere compared to Washington in September 2012, when then Secretary of State Clinton hosted the first edition of the Morocco-United States Strategic Dialogue.

In a week where the news from the Maghreb had been catastrophic - Ambassador Chris Stevens had just been killed in Libya - Secretary Clinton recalled why the Strategic Dialogue was important:

No country has been a friend of the United States longer than Morocco. You were the first nation to recognize us back in 1777. But we’re not satisfied with simply having a friendship that is longstanding. We want one that is dynamic, growing, looking toward the future.

Which is what brought TALIM to devote this year's April Seminar to a sort of status report on the Dialogue.  Our proceedings covered the same four areas that involved Working Groups composed of diplomats and experts from both countries: Political, Economic, Education & Culture, and Security.  Our format was to mirror the "WGs" with speakers, Moroccan and American, on each of these four pillars.

In light of the - we hope temporary - boycott by Moroccan officials of certain American events, all of our panels but one had an empty chair at the table. 

Security

Mr. Larry Velte of the National Defense University's Near East South Asia Center (NESA) provided an excellent inventory of the rich variety of security sector cooperation between Morocco and the United States.  Classic service programs (Navy to Navy, etc.) exist, but so too do connections where no institutional counterpart exists - the Moroccan gendarmerie, for instance.  In an area like disaster relief, it was the state of Utah National Guard that was the quickest to react, while the DOD was still trying to sort out fiscal data.  Utah didn't ask, "who will pay for it?"

AFRICOM social scientist Dr. Liza Briggs, freed up from the "deferred" African Lion '13 joint exercise, attended the Seminar, a reminder that the flap over the Sahara UN issue carried a price in terms of a long-running symbol of security cooperation.  Dr. Briggs, in her conversations with soldiers from the US and Morocco, indicated that "mil to mil" relations were going along smoothly, and of course go beyond the matter of a postponed exercise, costly as that might be in terms of logistical expenses and opportunities lost.

Update, Wednesday 25 April: the US Embassy in Rabat has announced that - following another US policy readjustment - the African Lion excercise would resume on a limited scale.

Finally, Olmstead Scholars from the US Army, US Air Force, and the Marine Corps attended our Seminar, fresh from their classes at Moroccan universities and before rejoining their respective services.

Education & Culture

Dr. James Miller, Executive Secretary of the Fulbright Commission in Morocco (MACECE) provided an overview of the history of American-Moroccan cooperation in education, the bases of which started as early as the World War II Anfa (Casablanca) Conference and early postwar aid programs.  Even before Morocco regained its independence in 1956, Fulbright scholars were active in the country.

The state of higher education in Morocco is a concern to MACECE, and to TALIM (full disclosure: TALIM director Loftus is on the MACECE board, and TALIM is the AIMS research center in Morocco, home to Moroccan, American, and other scholars).  Fulbright scholars from the US come to Morocco, and Moroccans study in the United States.  One of the main problem areas is simply the resources devoted to education: the University of Fez, for example, has upwards of 96,000 students!

Dr. Miller's presentation was replete with such stupendous numbers (in another faculty, 23 professors deal with some 5,000 students).  A special type of French jargon has been developed to describe the "massification" of Moroccan universities, where students are piled on without classrooms, and classrooms without teachers; a "voluntary departure" program led to massive reductions in experienced teachers, and those that are left sometimes teach courses in things like COBOL, a computer programming language developed in the Fifties, simply because that's the last thing they themselves learned.

Much of the structural - literally - problems in universities have their roots in attitudes left over from the bad old days of distrust of intellectuals under King Hassan II, when they were automatically suspected of disloyalty.  Arts faculties (traditionally left wing) were physically separated from those of science, seen as more compliant.  Even now, while "autonomy" is seen as an end worthy of every institution and university faculty, the financial means to that end are nonexistent.

Economics

Dr. Kamal Tazi of Mohamed V University in Rabat, a regular visitor to Tangier as guest lecturer at business school HEM, gave a very fluid overview of the Moroccan economy, in light of the reforms recently undertaken by King Mohamed VI's government, and the still-necessary reforms to come.  Tazi was unique among Moroccan speakers scheduled for this Seminar: he showed up.  And we were lucky to have such a frank analyst of his country's economy, whose heartfelt plea for an open, humane society tempered the facts and figures usually a feature of "the dismal science."

On the American side, US Consul General Brian Shukan (Casablanca) spoke to the vibrant commercial relations between the two countries, something he sees on a daily basis as the chief US diplomat in Morocco's economic capital.  Brian also looked at economic integration in the region - or, in the case of inter-Maghreb flows, lack of integration - seeing potential advantages in a number of areas, including political stabilty.  The US-Morocco Free Trade Agreement (FTA) is a cornerstone of bilateral economic ties, and today some 120 American firms operate facilities in Morocco.

Political

In some way, the very fact of the Strategic Dialogue - and the apparent snub by Moroccan officials and some individual speakers of our proceedings - shows the essentially political nature of relations.

Dr. Jack Kalpakian of AUI, Al Akhawayn University in Ifrane, described his introduction to Morocco, which, as a state, is defined by the Makhzen, the ubiquitous term that includes the royal family and the state institutions.  It's often summed up on the whitewashed walls of beachside guard posts and in white-painted rocks on hillsides: Allah, al-Malik, al-Watan: God, King, and Country.

There's a related triumverate of Moroccan red lines: Islam, the monarchy, and the Sahara.  The latter, of course, was the issue which led to the current state of tetchiness so apparent in our empty seats at the table.  Why, asks Kalpakian, the extreme sensitivity in Morocco to the matter of the Sahara?  Simply legitimacy: any questioning of Moroccan sovereignty over the Sahara is seen as a threat to national integrity.

Looking at the conundrum for Moroccans that the US represents, Kalpakian imagines how the decentralized, disparate nature of American government must present a quandary for Morocco, where you can just deal with the appropriate ministries.  The US isn't, like some of his students might think, a "Super France," and Morocco isn't like governed like Maryland.

So, down at the level of the citizenry, we had a Dialogue that, while perhaps not Strategic, was meaningful and certainly multidimensional.  Moroccans and Americans - and a good number of Europeans - from academia, government, private sector.  From lycée through troisième age.  A rich dialogue representing the potential for exchange going beyond what we like to harp on, our historic Moroccan-American ties.  As Hillary Clinton said, we want a relationship "that is dynamic, growing, looking toward the future."

Where Are the Maghrebi Artists?

"Converging Territories," Lalla Essaydi

Dr. Carol Solomon of Haverford College, Pennsylvania, in Morocco on a Fulbright grant, was intrigued by that very question: in many of the textbooks and survey courses of African art, the art of North Africa was always given the shortest chapter.  Odd, as the region's recorded history goes further back than much that is available on sub-Saharan Africa.  She set out to find out "where were the Maghrebi artists?" 

In Algiers a few years ago for the opening of MAMA, the national museum of contemporary art, Carol Solomon heard the lament of a number of artists about the general lack of galleries and facilities for artists.  In Morocco, only Tetouan (Beaux Arts) and Casablanca (Design) offer art schools.  "How do I survive as an artist in my country?"  Many choose to emigrate, and it was this vein which Dr. Solomon has mined.

For her presentation at TALIM yesterday, Dr. Solomon chose to focus on "Women Artists of the North African Diaspora," a subject rich in diversity.  Indeed, such descriptions as "third space," "limnal," "edge," and "hybridity" pepper Carol's vision of the art of the daughters of Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia who not only fly back and forth between the Maghreb and Europe or North America, but whose art inhabits that in-between territory.  She shares Edward Said's view of the "plurality of vision" of these multi-state citizens.

Said, whose book "Orientalism" informed and shaped much study of West - MidEast cultural relations, might be surprised at the lingering popularity of much Orientalist art, and not just among European art collectors nostalgic for sepia-toned views of harems and fantasias.

No, as Solomon says, Orientalist works are the rage too in places like the Gulf, where wealthy sheikhs buy up art to populate new museums and galleries, and 19th century Orientalist paintings offer a measure of "topographic, ethnographic, and historic" accuracy, along with nostalgic appeal to buyers whose grandfathers were Bedouins with little contact with the Seraglio.

Carol Solomon presented the audience with the works of a hometown star, Yto Barrada, who might be better known in Tangier for her pioneering work in restoring the historic Cinema Rif and turning it into a respected and much-appreciated institution, the Cinémathèque Tanger.  But Yto Barrada is also a prize-winning photographer, and her "projects" like the "Strait Project" involve photography but also sculpture, often providing a biting commentary on the rampant over-development that not only wipes out historic vestiges of Tangier's rich architectural past, but endangers the unique flora and fauna of this zone that is Africa's closest point to Europe.

Les Femmes du Maroc, No. 14, Lalla Essaydi

Another Moroccan, who has settled in the United States, Lalla Essaydi, has been recognized as worthy of a Smithsonian exhibition, "Revisions."  Carol, who curated an exhibit in 2008 at Amherst College, introduced a work by Essaydi that received a review in her native Morocco.  Essaydi later told Carol Solomon that the picture of her work was the first time that any of her images was seen in Morocco.

TALIM - thanks to a grant from the Moroccan American Cultural Center (MACC) in Washington - will soon be mounting a new permanent exhibit at the Legation Pavilion, entitled "Moroccans in America," featuring talent from across the spectrum of the arts, literature, academia, and public service.  We will be featuring, thanks to Lalla Essaydi, one of her works from "Les Femmes du Maroc," currently exhibited at the Banque al-Maghrib.

Back to the Orientalists.  Today's women artists from the Maghreb will often do what Lalla Essaydi terms "neo-Orientalist" takes on works like that of Delacroix's "The Women of Algiers," even naming their works with more than a nod to the 19th century exoticists.  Franco-Algerian Zoulikha Bouabdellah, whose performance art "Dansons," or the Marseillaise, belly-dance version, turns Orientalism on its head, and would make both Front National and Front Islamique partisans equally livid with its cross-cultural identity-blurring juxtapostion of bleu-blanc-rouge "nationalism" and sequinned hip-swiveling.

But that's what the women artists of the Maghreb diaspora do best: challenge stereotypes, mix media, and generally get their native Maghreb on the stage of the world.  Carol Solomon gave us a taste of what is out there, and we appreciate the wisdom she imparted.

Colloque à Tanger: Francophones Cut Up the Town

Tangier, since last Thursday, has been the haunt of people haunted by the spirits of The Beats, in particular Brion Gysin and William Burroughs, artists and writers who made Tangier their temporary home in the 1950s, fleeing an America - especially true for Burroughs - that was definitely not quite ready for their iconoclastic lifestyle.

Moussem à Sidi Ali Harazem, Brion Gysin, 1968, Tangier American Legation museum (loaned to the Galerie Delacroix Brion Gysin expo through 4 May 2013)

Organized by the Marseille Centre International de Poésie (CIPM), the colloque brought together poets, translators, scholars, and performance artists.  The latter included Americans Patti Smith and Anne Waldman, both connected with Beat artists and writers.  Anne Waldman makes a career of it at Naropa University's "Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics." 

Obviously, these are people whose idea of the written, spoken, or sung word is not bound by things like punctuation - Kerouac's famous scroll manuscript for On The Road was written without such frills as "chapters" or even "pages."  Several of the sessions were devoted to the "Cut up" school of poetry of Brion Gysin fame, and it was fun to hear (though the Académie Française would cringe) such Frenchifications as the infinitive "cutupiser" - perhaps découpage is too American, too artsy-craftsy ("how to decoupage," for example).  Cut up appears to be to poetry - a random collage of words - what monkeys-with-darts is to investing in Wall Street.

Speaking of On the Road, Walter Salles' film was shown with the Cinémathèque's new Sony 4K digital cinema projector - wow.  The timing - on the eve of the Colloque - helped us learn a bit more about Beat lore, and especially William Burroughs' back story: Viggo Mortensen's enigmatic portrayal of the oddball character who represents Burroughs gives an eerie premonition of WB's "William Tell" shooting of his wife Joan.  Then again, as Burroughs tells it, had he not shot his wife, he wouldn't have started writing, and thanks to his writing, we now have the term Interzone, not only the title of a book but the best one-word summary of how to describe Tangier in its wild years as the International Zone bolt-hole for Beats.

Organizers felt it necessary to bring forth, for the n^th time, Tangier Beats/Bowles perennial Mohamed Mrabet, whose stories were told in translation, with the storyteller referring to himself in the third person - "Mrabet then said...".  Putting it kindly, it is not clear whether his meaning is lost in translation, or whether there is no there, there.  Like Chauncey Gardener in Being There, as Roger Ebert put it: "simplicity is mistaken for profundity." Mrabet continues to tell the same "stories" to polite applause, even though much of the audience - including those who share Mrabet's native Moroccan Arabic - is left utterly puzzled as to what he has just uttered.

But I digress.  The Colloque à Tanger was a worthy effort by people who wanted to recreate what Burroughs and Gysin did in their 1975 Colloque de Tanger, which was actually held in Geneva.  Books were published, concerts were held (we were happy to "discover" Patti Smith, a dynamo performer with a poet's sensibility), and works were read.

The Colloque provided us an impetus to mount a Gysin - Burroughs exhibit of art works and photos that we already had, scattered around TALIM's museum and library.  And like the little - just published for the Colloque - Khbar Bladna book of Gysin works, photos, and memorabilia, we leave you with Ira Cohen's photo of the artist in a mask, reproduced for the book from a photo at TALIM's museum.

Colloque Facebook page.

Vanessa Paloma & the Spirit of Moroccan Jews

Vanessa Paloma is a singer, performer, scholar and writer specializing in Judeo-Spanish women’s songs and their role in Sephardic communities.  Internationally known for this repertoire, she has performed and lectured on five continents.  A current Research Associate of the Hadassah Brandeis Institute at Brandeis University, Paloma was a Senior Fulbright Research Scholar in Morocco during 2007-2008.

From her bio.  Official website, and blog.

You don't just get a solo concert, voice and harp, when Vanessa Paloma comes to Tangier.  Vanessa, who spent her Fulbright year here, just around the corner from the Legation, comes home to Tangier, and her loyal following in this city reciprocates by coming in numbers to her concert.  Last Thursday was no exception, despite several other competing cultural events.

Photo by Nathan Evans

Vanessa Paloma's homecoming is more than just revisting her old haunts.  It's a matter of roots: her mother's family, the Colombian side of this very international family, came to Latin America via Tetouan, Tangier's neighbor at the edge of the Rif Mountains.  In other words, Vanessa's work on the music of Morocco's Jewish diaspora is personal.  One of her stories, La Mantilla, traces the story of a shawl brought from Tetouan to Bogotà by her great-great-grandmother.

 

Her latest book, "The Mountain, the Desert, and the Pomegranate: Stories from Morocco and Beyond" (Gaon Books), provided material for her readings, which bracketed her renditions of often soulful Sephardic songs.  We see that an image of Drouj Merican (the American Steps leading up to the Legation) features in one of her Tangier-based stories.

Vanessa Paloma is not your typical academic, but she is nevertheless a serious scholar of the rich musical tradition of the Jews of Andalusia and the Sephardic diaspora, especially the centuries spent in Morocco, where Jews expelled from Reconquista Spain found refuge.  Here's her introduction to a 2009 paper on the Judeo-Spanish musical tradition in Morocco:

The Judeo-Spanish Romancero song tradition found a hospitable dwelling in
the Jewish communities of Northern Morocco.  The proximity between Spain and
Morocco led to a constant cultural, economic and political exchange across the Strait of Gibraltar.  This maritime frontier, which today is experienced as a formidable barrier for those Moroccans without a visa, was confronted with much more ease and openness in centuries past.  The very fact that each population establishes almost daily visual contact with the land across the Strait determines the continuous presence in the imaginary realm as well as the palpable reality of their contiguity.  A sustained exchange of music and ideas migrated along with commercial goods and diplomatic missions earlier than the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.  I like to think of this aqueous frontier as a fluid and live center of intercultural, interreligious and interlingual encounters.

Vanessa's family traversed this aqueous frontier on several occasions (fleeing Spain, emigrating to the New World, then her own "return" to Morocco for her studies and now, as the wife and mother of Jews born in Morocco).  She knows of what she writes - and sings.  It's hard to get more authentic scholarship than that.