There is more to it than Casablanca

Music, film, sound, and conversation across Moroccan times and grounds

Saturday 20 September, at 13:30–01:00

160–250 kr

35 % off with ultiMATE

Curious about Moroccan music, club culture, and how stories travel across borders?

There is more to it than Casablanca offers concerts, films, DJ sets, food, reading circles and radio talks—all in one full day and night. It brings artists and audiences together to explore Moroccan music and sound, from contemporary classical to rock, electronica and hip hop.

At the heart of the event is sonic pluralism—a listening practice that sees sound as shaped by place, memory and movement. It challenges how Western technologies and ideas have defined sound, and shows how it can be reimagined through other tools, voices and traditions.

The programme highlights radical and experimental practices past and present in Morocco: the political street poetry of Nass El Ghiwane, the decolonial ethos of the Casablanca Art School, and Ahmed Essyad’s 1970s electronic tape works from exile in the 1970s. Today this legacy continues through artists like Leila Bencharnia, and video artist & DJ Moe Chakiri. Their contributions—via films, performances, talks, and informal formats—come alive with many of the artists present to share their insights.

Not all contributors come from Morocco. Francesca Ceccherini of the Swiss collective Zaira Oram presents Abdellah M. Hassak’s work A Symphony of Archives, and Gilles Aubry shares his experiments with AI and traditional music. Lawrence Abu Hamdan’s reflections on the sonic politics of the sky open up yet other geographies. Together, they invite us to listen across borders, disciplines and lived realities.

This is also an invitation to communities with ties to Morocco to come together—to remember, to listen, across time and place.

Programme

Featuring composer Ahmed Essyad; artist-researcher Gilles Aubry; composer-artist Leila Bencharnia; flautist Yumi Murakami; curator-researcher Fatima-Zahra Lakrissa; Francesca Ceccherini (Zaira Oram); a Masahat-hosted reading circle; and DJ sets by Moe Chakiri, among others.

Film screenings feature Trances (1981) on Nass El Ghiwane; Salam Godzilla (2019) and L’Makina (2023) by Gilles Aubry; and The Diary of a Sky (2024) by Lawrence Abu Hamdan. Additional films will be duly announced.

Moderated by Katía Truijen (Rewire Festival), Heloisa Amaral (Ultima), Ash Kilmartin (Radio WORM) and Selma Benmalek (Masahat).

More events to be confirmed in August.

Facts

Moroccan culture blends Arab, Amazigh, Andalusian, African, and European influences. After independence in 1956, music became central to decolonisation, as artists reclaimed oral traditions, rhythms, and languages. Today, censorship, unrest, and migration continue to shape a scene marked by sonic experimentation and coded critique.
Sonic pluralism, a concept coined by Gilles Aubry in the book Sawt, Bodies, Species, explores how diverse acoustic practices in Morocco challenge dominant listening habits. The book combines sound studies, fieldwork, and artistic collaboration to propose locally grounded sonic knowledge.
The title refers to Casablanca (1942), a film romanticising Morocco while silencing local voices. This programme listens differently—to stories rooted in lived experience and reimagined across borders, history and diaspora.