THE HALKA AT THE SERVICE OF MEMORY

Morocco: The halka at the service 

of memory

The halka at the service  of memory

     In Morocco, the Halka, a place of fun and laughter, is mainly present in large public places in cities even if, today, the cultural heritage is starting to disappear.

The art of Halka, the oldest form of traditional theater in Morocco, has existed since the dawn of time. During an outdoor performance, without a curtain, without distance between spectators and the actor, without makeup and without artifices, pieces of different genres are played. The Halka remains a place of transmission of culture, a guarantor of artistic memory.

Oral literature takes the form of prose or poetry. Poetic art was essentially an art sung, with or without musical accompaniment. Love, social issues, politics, religion, morals, or even death, poets have a wide choice of themes to tackle. The representations open with introductions and close with conclusions both codified while not forgetting to invoke God, in Arabic, or in one of the Moroccan dialects.

THE BIRTH OF HALKA IN PUBLIC SPACE: 

When we talk about Halka, we think of Jamaâ El Fna square in Marrakech where this tradition has been perpetuated for centuries. The spectator can pass from storytellers of all kinds to snake charmers through acrobatics games and soothsayers who have kept all their authenticity.

The halka was born from a person nicknamed in Arabic lemsiyah (in French: clown), who had a gift for speaking and telling stories. The lemsiyah invented stories in ancient kingdoms, tracing the lives of the prophets. With much exaggeration, he did not hesitate to make riddles, using prophets, and taking advantage of myths. To better listen to the stories, the crowd began to form a circle, which in Arabic is called Halka, around the hlaïqya, the animator of the Halkas.

The hlaïqya made his gift his profession. From city to city, from souk to souk, he traveled to share his talent. The hlaïqya multiplied and diversified to tell stories as fantastic as they were drawn from reality. The stories are told by episode for several weeks or even several months. Surprisingly each time their spectators with a news story or a new riddle, the hlaïqya never lacked inspiration.

THE HLAÏQYA, A POPULAR FIGURE: 

The majority of the hlaïqya come from the countryside. Although many are illiterate with a basic level of education, this does not prevent them from being talented. At the time, this work was not decent even if the Moroccan population was lulled by their stories.

The halka at the service  of memory

Over time, a lot of will and effort have helped to change the opinion of Moroccans. The Halka storyteller has become a full-fledged character in Moroccan society, which fits perfectly into the decor of cities. The Halka is now recognized as a real profession, and storytellers have their rights and duties recognized. They even created their own union. Several institutions annually organize Halka art festivals. For the organizers of such events, the aim is to contribute to the preservation of popular memory, to participate in the promotion of the national heritage and to revive the ancient popular oral culture.

Today, social, economic, and cultural changes, associated with a greater diversity of modern means of transmitting knowledge, are contributing to a progressive marginalization of the spectacle of the Halka, formerly the only means of distracting the crowd.

A PROTECTIVE ELEMENT OF THE ORAL TRADITION:

Most Moroccan tales and legends are transmitted orally. Grandmothers tell their stories to their grandchildren from memory so that, in turn, they rock their children with Moroccan nursery rhymes, like the hlaïqya which transport listeners to an unreal and wonderful world.

Perhaps, you know the tales of Arabian Nights, the animal fables written by Ibn al-Muqaffa Kalila and Dimna, or even the fabulous story of the life of the famous Arab knight Saïf Dou Yazzan. And as the Moroccan playwright, calligrapher and writer Tayeb Saddiki put it very well, "We have all learned something from the Halqa".