Diaspora #390 : Mohamed Aadroun, reviving Andalusian music in the Netherlands
Aadroun is a passionate student of Al-Andalus, drawn to its cultural and artistic heritage. He is especially interested in historical travelogues, the evolution of musical traditions, and the documented customs, etiquette, and culinary practices of the era.
«I see Andalusian music as the ultimate expression of the Andalusian way of life, its knowledge, art, science, and intellectual legacy. Without falling into nostalgia, the more you learn about Al-Andalus, the more you want to know, and the more you realize how advanced that region was for its time—even in the Middle Ages», says Mohamed Aadroun.
A Family Story Revisited Through History
For Aadroun, Andalusian music is more than just an art form; it's a connection to his personal story.
«My father, a police officer in Amsterdam, and my mother, who dedicated her life to raising me and my three brothers, are from El Jebeha in northern Morocco. That region is known for welcoming many Andalusian, Jewish, and Muslim families during the Reconquista (722–1492)», he explains.
Through his research, Aadroun even traced an ancestor who was part of those families that crossed the Mediterranean.
«By exploring the broader historical and cultural context, I found myself reconnecting with my own history, my ancestors' story, and the shared heritage of many from that region».
Together with childhood friend Mohamed Chairi, a musician specializing in Andalusian music, Aadroun began to explore ways to bring these stories to life on stage.
«We didn't know exactly where it would lead at first, but we wanted to create a concept that would appeal to venues and audiences, blending these historical stories with music».
From Public Service to the Stage: The Birth of the AAO
Always drawn to creative fields, Aadroun shifted his career towards the performing arts in the 2010s. He honed his skills in video design and visual storytelling, and began writing scripts for stage productions that blend theater, historical narratives, and live music. In 2011, he joined forces with Mohamed Chairi, Yassine Boussaid, and Dwight Breinburg to create the Amsterdam Andalusian Orchestra (AAO).
«My first script told the story of an Andalusian poet forced to flee during the Reconquista. Combining acting and Andalusian music was well-received, and we went on to produce our first multidisciplinary performance», says Aadroun, who now has five such works to his name.
His themes explore personal and collective stories set against the backdrop of Caliphal Andalusia, weaving together heritage, memory, coexistence, cultural diversity, and identity.
«The historical narratives of Al-Andalus are an endless source of inspiration for us, as heirs of diverse cultures. They remind us that we belong where we are—we can be Dutch, Moroccan, and custodians of multiple histories that don't exclude but enrich each other».
Aadroun's works delve into a variety of historical figures and themes: Leo Africanus, also known as Hassan al-Wazzan, who embodied a triple identity—Andalusian, Moroccan, and Italian. Another piece centers on Abul-Abbas, the white elephant gifted to Charlemagne by Abbasid Caliph Harun al-Rashid in the 9th century.
«Combining music and theater helps us connect with audiences across languages and cultures», Aadroun explains.
For him, research and documentation are key.
«It's essential for both the scripts and the music itself. We provide context that grounds Andalusian music in its ancestral roots while opening it to contemporary experimentation. Performances should be festive, of course, but also historical, educational, and accessible».
This approach, Aadroun believes, is crucial for the personal development of younger generations—and even older ones, who may rediscover positive aspects of their heritage through art. «For me, it's the best way to share these ideas».
The AAO has steadily grown its musical repertoire, developing a core group of artists who explore Andalusian music's journey from Granada to Baghdad. The orchestra's multidisciplinary vision also embraces dance, photography, intimate concerts, and large-scale performances. The creation of the Maqam Cultural Center in Amsterdam has further expanded this vision, offering workshops, training sessions, rehearsals, thematic gatherings, and talks.
A Decade of Creativity and Cultural Exchange
For over a decade, the AAO has also organized the International Oud Festival, a biennial event that brings together oud players from across the globe—from North America to the Middle East, Asia, Africa, and Europe.
"It's been a challenge to find musicians in the Netherlands who are well-versed in Andalusian music. But as we've grown, we've built a strong base of artists—some from jazz or classical backgrounds, from Germany, Spain, and beyond. We give them time and space to explore different styles over several years», Aadroun explains.
Today, he expresses pride in the collaboration. «The artists' talent, curiosity, and flexibility enrich the project. It shows a new dimension of Andalusian culture—one that's universal and open to experimentation».
Artistic Confusion, Not Fusion
Staying true to its inclusive approach, the AAO offers Andalusian music workshops to young people of all backgrounds—Dutch, Moroccan, and beyond. This spirit of openness extends to annual performances in other Dutch music festivals, including Musica Mundo – Rhythms of the World in Amersfoort, where festival founder Hassan Elammouri invites the AAO to present innovative projects pairing guest soloists from diverse musical traditions.
«In the city of Amersfoort, we participate annually in the festival. It's an opportunity to propose fresh, boundary-pushing projects in collaboration with invited soloists who come from different musical backgrounds», Aadroun says.
The Andalusian music soloist Zainab Afailal and soprano Aylin Sezer with the AAO / Ph. Peter Putters - Musica Mundo - Rhythms of the World
As Hassan Elammouri puts it, the result is «artistic confusion, not fusion»—a creative process that allows artists to perform authentically, beyond their usual musical genres. For audiences and performers alike, the experience is unforgettable. For Aadroun, it reaffirms the rich, open, and experimental nature of Andalusian music, both historically and today. The upcoming edition of the festival, set for June 26–29, 2025, will feature a co-production with the AAO and guest artists Tony Overwater, Mark Tuinstra, Aziz Ozouss, and Esinam.
«At the AAO, we speak six languages, reflecting the cultural diversity of our members. This shows that music is a true language—honest in its expression, feelings, and emotions. It's the core philosophy of our orchestra. And it's also the thread running through all our stage productions».
A Future in Morocco
Looking ahead, Aadroun hopes to strengthen partnerships between the AAO and cultural institutions in Morocco to stage more performances there.
«We've performed concerts in the Netherlands with artists like Nabila Maan, Zainab Afailal, Youssef Jrifi, Leïla Gouchi, Omar Metioui, Jamal Eddine Ben Allal, Hamid Bouchnak—our king of raï—and our gnawa master, Hind Ennaira. We've also played with local artists in Tangier and Rabat», Aadroun recalls.
He looks forward to new opportunities to share these moments with Moroccan audiences, whether through the AAO's immersive Hadra experience or their Maghreb Icons show, which pays tribute to regional musical legends through a staging set in the 1980s—blending theater, music, and personal stories of artists who shaped their era.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Morocco World
a day ago
- Morocco World
The Moor in Whitehall: A Moroccan Ambassador at Elizabeth I's Court, Cross-Cultural Diplomacy, and the Genesis of Shakespeare's Othello
In November 1604, Othello was first performed before King James I at Whitehall Palace. The play has since been read as a meditation on jealousy, race, and the fragility of trust; yet its origins cannot be fully understood without situating it in the fertile—and fraught—terrain of Elizabethan and Jacobean encounters with the Islamic world (Matar 2005; Brotton 2016). Shakespeare's principal plot source, Giraldi Cinthio's 1565 novella Un Capitano Moro, provided him with the basic architecture of the tragedy: the noble Moor in Venetian service, the illicit marriage to a senator's daughter, the corrosive influence of a duplicitous ensign, and the ultimate destruction of both the general and his wife (Bullough 1975). Yet, in the transformation from Cinthio's prose to the blank verse of Othello, something significant occurred: the Moor became not merely a literary type, but a figure that bore the marks of lived intercultural contact between England and the Muslim powers of North Africa (Vitkus 1999). Historiography and Cross-Cultural Encounters Historians of Anglo-Moroccan relations, such as Nabil Matar and Jerry Brotton, have meticulously documented the warmth of diplomatic and commercial ties between Protestant England and Saʿdian Morocco in the late sixteenth century (Matar 2005; Brotton 2016). United by hostility toward Catholic Spain, Queen Elizabeth I and Sultan Ahmad al-Mansur exchanged letters, envoys, and commercial concessions. Sugar, saltpetre, and gold moved north; cloth, arms, and naval expertise moved south. It was in this geopolitical climate that the Moroccan ambassador Abdel Wahid Ben Massoud Ben Mohammed Al-Annuri arrived in London in August 1600, leading a delegation of some sixteen men. His mission was explicit: to negotiate a military alliance that might culminate in a coordinated assault on Spanish territories (Brotton 2016, 214–218). Contemporary reports and visual records—the ambassador's portrait survives—describe a tall, dignified figure in sumptuous robes, skilled in the arts of rhetoric and diplomacy. Londoners, accustomed to seeing 'Moors' only in the margins of royal pageants or in sailors' tales, suddenly encountered a living embodiment of Muslim sovereignty, military power, and political sophistication (Matar 2005, 112–115). From Diplomacy to Drama The historical record places Abdel Wahid in London until early 1601. His presence coincided with the height of theatrical vitality in the capital, when the Lord Chamberlain's Men (Shakespeare's own company) were performing for both court and public (Honigmann 1997). By 1603, with James I on the throne, Shakespeare had begun adapting Un Capitano Moro into the play we now know as Othello. Here historiography and cultural studies intersect. Abdel Wahid's embassy was not an isolated curiosity; it was part of a larger English engagement with the Muslim world that unsettled the binary opposition of Christendom and Islam (Vitkus 1999). Morocco, unlike the Ottoman Empire, was a partner rather than an adversary, and in certain contexts, an equal. Abdel Wahid's presence in London demonstrated that Moors could be envoys, negotiators, even allies—figures of political legitimacy, not merely exotic Others (Brotton 2016, 223–225). Shakespeare, I would argue, took from Cinthio the tragic scaffold but fleshed it out with the living memory of Abdel Wahid: a noble Moor of high standing, operating within a European polity, whose loyalty and identity might nonetheless be subject to scrutiny, prejudice, and betrayal. Orientalism Before Orientalism Edward Said's Orientalism famously traced the nineteenth-century codification of 'the Orient' as an object of European knowledge and domination (Said 1978). Yet, in the early seventeenth century, England's discourses on the Islamic world were more unstable, more transactional. The Moroccan ambassador was not yet a subject to be classified and ruled; he was a sovereign's representative, courted and respected (Matar 2005; Brotton 2016). In Othello, we see a tension between two representational impulses: the romanticized warrior whose foreignness is alluring (Desdemona's attraction to Othello's 'tales of adventure') and the racialized outsider whose difference can be weaponized against him (Iago's insidious references to 'the Moor' and 'old black ram') (Neill 2006). The play thus participates in what we might call proto-Orientalist discourse—one that vacillates between fascination and fear, between alliance and alienation (Vitkus 1999). Othello is not an Ottoman sultan or a caricatured stage Turk; he is a Christianized Moor in Venetian service. Yet the mechanisms that undo him—whispers of unassimilable difference, the easy mobilization of racial slurs, the fragility of trust—mirror the anxieties that could undercut even the most promising cross-cultural alliances. Cultural Memory and the Elizabethan Imagination Abdel Wahid's London visit sparked more than political intrigue. It expanded the English imaginary. Writers, artists, and dramatists now had a living model of a Moorish ambassador—someone who could move between Islamic and European courts, who embodied both alterity and parity (Brotton 2016, 227–230). For the playhouse audience, Othello's combination of martial prowess, rhetorical skill, and vulnerability to racialized suspicion would have resonated with what they had heard, seen, or imagined about Morocco's envoys. Furthermore, Shakespeare stages Othello's tragedy not in Morocco but in Venice and Cyprus—borderlands of Christendom's interface with Islam. This displacement allows the play to explore questions of loyalty, service, and trust without directly dramatizing England's own alliance with a Muslim state, while still drawing on its emotional charge (Vitkus 1999). Historiographic Speculation and Literary Genesis While no documentary evidence proves that Shakespeare met Abdel Wahid, the circumstantial case is compelling. The proximity in time between the embassy (1600–1601) and the composition of Othello (1603–1604), the convergence of diplomatic and theatrical circles in London, and the vivid cultural impression made by the Moroccan delegation suggest that the ambassador's visit formed part of the creative ferment from which the play emerged (Brotton 2016; Matar 2005). It is here that cultural studies adds nuance: Othello is not a one-to-one portrait of Abdel Wahid, but a palimpsest in which literary tradition (Cinthio), political reality (Anglo-Moroccan diplomacy), and popular fascination with the figure of the Moor are layered together (Neill 2006). Conclusion: Beyond the Exotic To read Othello through the lens of Abdel Wahid Ben Massoud's embassy is to resist reductive notions of the Moor as mere exotic Other. It is to recall that, for a brief historical moment, England and Morocco stood as partners in a global contest for power, their representatives meeting as equals in London's chambers and palaces (Brotton 2016; Matar 2005). In this light, Othello becomes more than a tragedy of personal jealousy. It becomes a meditation on the possibilities and perils of cross-cultural alliance—a reminder that admiration can curdle into suspicion, and that the very qualities which commend the outsider to service may also render him vulnerable to betrayal. The Moor who strode through Whitehall in 1600 was a real man, an ambassador of a sovereign state; the Moor who strode the stage in 1604 was his dramatic kin, bound by the same paradox: to be both indispensable and perpetually suspect in the eyes of those he served. References Brotton, Jerry. This Orient Isle: Elizabethan England and the Islamic World. London: Penguin, 2016. Bullough, Geoffrey, ed. Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare, Vol. 7. London: Routledge, 1975. Honigmann, E.A.J. Othello. Arden Shakespeare, 1997. Matar, Nabil. Turks, Moors, and Englishmen in the Age of Discovery. New York: Columbia University Press, 2005. Neill, Michael. Othello. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. Said, Edward W. Orientalism. New York: Pantheon, 1978. • Vitkus, Daniel J. 'Turning Turk in Othello: The Conversion and Damnation of the Moor.' Shakespeare Quarterly 48, no. 2 (1999): 145–176.
Ya Biladi
3 days ago
- Ya Biladi
Hawai‘i's premier culinary gala to spotlight Moroccan cuisine this September
Hawai'i's signature food and restaurant gala, the Hale 'Aina Celebration, returns on September 6, 2025, with a Moroccan twist. Organized annually by HONOLULU Magazine, the event honors the islands' top chefs and eateries through an evening of food, culture, and entertainment. Held on the Ocean Lawn of The Royal Hawaiian, this year's edition is themed «A Night in Morocco». Guests will step into an immersive Marrakech-style night market, complete with glowing lanterns, spice-colored textiles, and sultry music, writes HONOLULU Magazine on Thursday. The celebration will blend Hawai'i's award-winning cuisine with Moroccan ambiance, as top local chefs serve signature dishes inspired by the North African kingdom's culinary heritage.
Ya Biladi
02-08-2025
- Ya Biladi
Diaspo #400 : From Paris to Sydney, Jamal Gzem captures human stories through his lens
From the streets of Paris to London, Seoul, Sydney, and Tokyo, Jamal Gzem seeks connection, with strangers, with stories, and with the human experience, through his passion: photography. The Paris-born photographer believes that everyone has a story worth telling. Through spontaneous street encounters and intimate portraits, he captures those stories one click at a time. On his Instagram, Jamalmadeit, he shares these encounters with the world. Each one, he says, is a reminder that «we are all the same, and yet all unique», as he told Yabiladi. But before becoming the street photographer he is today, Jamal was on an entirely different path. Raised in the Parisian suburbs to Moroccan parents from the Souss region, he, like many others from immigrant families, followed a familiar and expected route. He studied finance at a business school in Nantes, Brittany, and built a stable career. «I graduated, worked in Zurich for three years, and then moved to Sydney to continue in finance, in a French bank», he recalls. The path to one's dream Yet, behind the spreadsheets and meetings, a different calling grew louder. «I was working in finance, but I was always passionate about photography and filmmaking», he says. That passion first took root during his student years in Nantes. «That was the first time I used a camera, the first time I flew a drone. I absolutely loved it. I did it every week», he recalled. In 2020, it all became more concrete when he bought his first camera. From that point, he began filming and practicing regularly, refining his craft. Then came Sydney, its vibrant landscapes and laid-back lifestyle offering fertile ground for creativity. «It's very different from Paris or Switzerland. There's so much to see and capture. I had all my weekends to travel». Eventually, the pull toward his creative passion became impossible to ignore. In January 2025, Jamal quit his job in finance and returned to France to spend Ramadan with his family. «For years, I had been thinking about leaving finance and starting full-time filmmaking», he explains. «That's what I eventually did». Still, it wasn't a decision he took lightly. «In our culture, financial stability is important. That's the biggest mental hurdle», he admits. «That's why I believe it's important to save money first, so you can dedicate yourself fully to your passion». Talking to strangers Back in France, he began building the life he truly wanted. He planned to work with businesses and content creators, but also to create his own content. «I love talking to people, I'm a very social person», he says. «But I didn't want to do photography only in a business context. I also wanted to do it for fun, with people in the streets». That's how his street photography project was born. «The day I decided to start, I just took a train to Paris, walked around for three hours, and filmed my first episodes for social media», he recalls. «The response was amazing. I received so much love and support from people I didn't even know». Since then, he's taken the project to cities like London, Madrid, and Lisbon, sometimes during Ramadan, walking four to five hours without food or water, just to meet strangers. In his videos, Jamal asks people if he can take their portrait while recording their interaction. What starts as a simple question often grows into something bigger. People open up, sharing a struggle, a dream, a message, or a painful experience, he says. «It's definitely hard to approach people and get them to open up, especially when it gets emotional», he admits. «I've released 161 episodes so far, but I've done maybe 300–400 portraits. And I've received around 2,000–3,000 rejections—probably more», he joked. But that, he says, is part of the journey. «Doing it so many times helped me not take rejection personally», he explains. «That said, you can't shut off your emotions completely, especially when someone shares something sad or inspiring». Not just an image, it's a story One of his most touching encounters was with a street cleaner in Paris named Youssouf, originally from Gambia, whose dream was to go to Mecca. «It was personal, pure, something many people would keep secret. But when people open up like that, the photo becomes more than just an image. It's a story». The video went viral, prompting a wave of donations via GoFundMe that helped Youssouf move closer to fulfilling his dream. Through these encounters, Jamal has come to a simple but powerful conclusion: «We all have emotions, hearts, stories, but our experiences shape us in very different ways». And it's not just his audience that's impacted. «When I post a story, the person often gets flooded with love and support from strangers», he says. While his street work nourishes his soul, Jamal also runs a photography and filmmaking business, mostly in Sydney, where he's now based. «I work with brands, companies, entrepreneurs, and content creators. There's a strong demand for videography, and Sydney is a great market». Though based in Australia, Jamal hasn't lost sight of his roots. The 27-year-old dreams of bringing his portrait series to Morocco—and perhaps capturing people's stories in Tachelhit, his parents' mother tongue. While pursuing his passion, Jamal learned that «we should all talk to strangers». «It's something everyone should do», he says with conviction.
