The festival
Organised by the Ministry of Youth, Culture and Communication (Department of Culture) and the Province of Ouarzazate, in partnership with the Association Ouarzazate Events.
Ahwach أحواش ⴰⵃⵡⴰⵛ
Ahwach names the collective dance forms of the Amazigh communities of the western High Atlas, the Anti-Atlas and the Souss plain. Two groups, often men and women, face each other and answer: a chant set by a leader, a response from the chorus, frame drums and great drums that accelerate in stages until the rhythm is released.
Sung poetry is its heart: improvised couplets, sometimes in contest, which the audience follows closely. Each valley, from Telouet to Tiznit, keeps its own form in rhythm, step and dress. Ahwach is passed on by being practised, at weddings, harvests and village festivals.
The national festival المهرجان الوطني
The Festival National des Arts d’Ahwach brings troupes from several regions of the Kingdom to Ouarzazate every year, under the High Patronage of His Majesty King Mohammed VI. It is organised by the Ministry of Youth, Culture and Communication (Department of Culture) and the Province of Ouarzazate, in partnership with the Association Ouarzazate Events. It has carried this name since 2012.
Performances at Kasbah Taourirt and in the city’s squares, seminars and conferences, workshops for young people and children, tributes to the figures of this art: the festival works to safeguard a living intangible heritage and to pass it on.
Ouarzazate ورزازات ⵡⴰⵔⵣⴰⵣⴰⵜ
At the gates of the Drâa, Ouarzazate is surrounded by earthen kasbahs and ksour. Kasbah Taourirt, a national monument, is its historic centre and the festival’s main venue.
Understanding Ahwach
What researchers and institutions have documented about the art of Ahwach, in twelve sourced points.
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What Ahwach is
Ahwach is the great collective form of the Tashelhit-speaking Amazigh communities of southern Morocco: sung poetry, choral response, dance and frame-drum percussion, carried by a whole village at the height of a celebration. In the south the word also serves as a generic name for collective village dance, hence the many locally named “types of ahwach”. The word’s etymology is not settled. The reference Tifinagh spelling is ⴰⵃⵡⴰⵛ.
Sources Encyclopédie berbère, “Danse” B. Lortat-Jacob, Cahiers de littérature orale Encyclopédie berbère, “Chleuh”
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Where Ahwach is danced
Ahwach belongs to the sedentary Tashelhit-speaking populations: the Anti-Atlas, the western and central High Atlas up to a line from Demnate to the Asif Mgoun, and the Souss plain. Further east and in the Middle Atlas reigns the ahidous of the Tamazight-speaking transhumants. The Drâa oases have their own collective forms, such as the aqlal, recorded as early as 1959 alongside the ahwach of the Atlas.
Sources Encyclopédie berbère, “Danse” Encyclopédie berbère, “Chleuh” Library of Congress, Paul Bowles Moroccan Music Collection
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How a piece unfolds
A poet opens with a distich; the men’s and women’s choirs take it up in alternation over the drums. About two thirds of the way through, the drummers must “cross the pass” (tizi): through a continuous acceleration the rhythm shifts from a symmetrical four-beat cycle to an asymmetrical one. The words then dissolve into a collective cry (ahayyu) and all attention turns to the dance. A piece lasts about twenty minutes. At least three drums are needed, about fifteen for true synchronisation; a village feast gathers some sixty people, the great summer weddings up to a thousand.
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Poetry at the heart
Poetry is the heart of Ahwach: the opening distich, the jousts (lmsaq) in which a soloist improvises verses that two facing choirs exchange, the long night poems (aqsiḍ), the couplets (izlan) of about fifteen syllables. The linguist Hassan Jouad showed that this improvisation obeys a closed system of metrical formulas: the improviser composes within a learned frame, at the speed of speech.
Sources A. Bounfour, Centre de recherche berbère (INALCO) D. Casajus, L’Homme (Persée) Review of Middle East Studies (Cambridge)
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Rhythm and drums
Ahwach is in two or four beats, whereas ahidous is most often in five. Its frame drums, large wooden hoops stretched with goat skin heated over a fire before playing, have no snare. Their names change from valley to valley: tagnza or tknza around Ouarzazate, allun, tallunt in the Souss, or the Arabic word bendir; the large double-headed drum is dendoum, tbel or ganga depending on the region. Specific to Ahwach, the percussion divides its roles: some drums hold the base, others syncopate, a soloist leads.
Sources Encyclopédie berbère, “Danse” B. Lortat-Jacob, Cahiers de littérature orale A. Aydoun, e-taqafa.ma (Fondation Hassan II pour les MRE)
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Men and women
When men and women perform together, space separates them: the men in the centre with the drums, the women in a ring around them or in two facing lines. Single-sex Ahwach also exist, such as ahwach n tfrkhin, in which the young women sing and the men drum. In the central High Atlas the youth association (laamt) organises the Ahwach, and a father withdraws once his eldest son joins. The idea that only unmarried women dance is at most a local rule, contradicted by practice.
Sources B. Lortat-Jacob, Cahiers de littérature orale Encyclopédie berbère, “Danse”
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Dress and jewellery
There is no single Ahwach costume; dress follows the custom of each region. White dominates almost everywhere for men (jellaba, turban, slippers, often the dagger), silver for women. Around Ouarzazate women wear the takchita or caftan under a shoulder veil; in the Souss and the western High Atlas, the white veil, the red headscarf and silver ornaments: frontal band, temple pendants, necklaces of linked pieces that sound with movement, bracelets and anklets.
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An art of the community
Ahwach takes place in the evening, on the village square (assays, asarag), for weddings, circumcisions, harvests, religious feasts and moussems, the welcoming of guests, and today for festivals. Among the Aït Mgoun, the music is everyone’s business: whom to invite, who will play and what will be sung are decided collectively, and crossing the pass successfully engages the honour of the village. The community’s honour also rests on its poet in gatherings between tribes.
Sources B. Lortat-Jacob, Cahiers de littérature orale High Atlas Foundation
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Transmission
Ahwach is learned by watching, listening and imitating at village gatherings; the youth ahwach and the youth association of the central High Atlas are its traditional schools. Practitioners interviewed in 2016 said the art was threatened with “folklorisation”: forgotten rhythmic variants, an eroded structure, ever rarer dedicated poets. Local associations, festivals, IRCAM, which publishes anthologies of Ahwach poets, and an audiovisual archiving effort begun in 2017 with Ibn Zohr University now carry much of the transmission.
Sources B. Lortat-Jacob, Cahiers de littérature orale Géoparc du Jbel Bani IRCAM, Institut Royal de la Culture Amazighe L'Economiste
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One art, a thousand valleys
Each valley keeps its form: Telouet, Taourirt and Tifoultoute around Ouarzazate, Kelaat Mgouna and the Dades, Agdz and the Drâa, Aoulouz, Taliouine and the Souss, Imintanout, Tiznit, Tafraout, Aït Baamrane, Tata and Tissint, the Haha of the Atlantic coast. The steps, rhythms, ornaments and drum names change, but the structure remains: the poet, the two choirs, the acceleration. The Ouarzazate festival brings these regional variants together on one square.
Sources Encyclopédie berbère, “Danse” Hespress High Atlas Foundation
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Heritage status, precisely
Ahwach is on no UNESCO list. Taskiwin, the martial dance of the western High Atlas related to Ahwach, was inscribed in 2017 on the List of Intangible Heritage in Need of Urgent Safeguarding; tourism pages confuse the two. Nationally, Ahwach is inventoried by the Ministry: a generic record in the Cultural Heritage Inventory and, in November 2022, the entry of the “Ahwach Ihahan” of the Haha in the national inventory of intangible heritage. In 2025 the acting regional director of Culture called for a UNESCO nomination.
Sources UNESCO, Morocco’s inscribed elements UNESCO, intangible cultural heritage, “Taskiwin” Al Alam MAP, via Madar21
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Ouarzazate and Kasbah Taourirt
The oldest known image is a photograph by Marcelin Flandrin, “Ahouach de Ouarzazate”, circa 1920. The Glaoua, masters of Telouet and then of Kasbah Taourirt until 1956, were reputed great organisers of Ahwach; the singer Safia Telouet sang there from 1959. Local tradition places the birth of Ahwach at Telouet, but the leading specialist, Bernard Lortat-Jacob, rejects a Glaoui origin: the origin of Ahwach cannot be dated by any document. Kasbah Taourirt is today the festival’s main stage.
Sources Maison de la Photographie de Marrakech Encyclopédie berbère, “Danse” Hespress
