Review: Meteor Airlines Bring Amazigh Rock to Timitar Festival
16.07.2024
Perhaps the most unique and talented of these young bands is Meteor Airlines min nawa7i Tinghir. Playing a style that draws equally from A7idous, Tuareg guitar music and heavy metal. Meteor Airlines can legitimately claim to be one of the most exciting new rock bands not just in Morocco but anywhere in the world. In their 5 July set at Timitar Festival 2024, they signaled the arrival of Amazigh Rock as a serious force in the Moroccan musical scene.
Founded in 2005, Agadir’s Timitar Festival showcases the richness of Amazigh musical heritage. This year’s edition of the festival included performances from classic Amazigh artists like Oudaden, Larbi Imghrane, and Khadija Atlas as well as a new generation of musicians like the rapper Dada and the indie rocker Jubantouja. The mix of genres and ages highlighted the strength and diversity of Amazigh culture, stretching from Paris to the Sahara and from traditional Rrways folk music to hardcore hip hop. Meteor Airlines headlined the smaller Bijawane Stage on Friday night, an intimate venue for their fans to celebrate the band’s extraordinary success.
Meteor Airlines is known for a distinct visual style, directed by visual artist and bassist Adnane Elouardi. Their videos imbue the native landscape of Southeast Morocco with fantastical flair alongside traditional elements of Amazigh culture. The band took the stage in Agadir adorned in their signature hooded cloaks, known as Azennar, which they wear as a revitalization of ancestral village traditions. They started with the slow-burning, largely percussion-less single “Iblis” led by backup singer Rachid Ennassiri, setting the tone for a 90 minute set packed with mournful lyrics and catchy choruses.
Played on electric guitar, bass, bendir, and qraqeb, Meteor Airlines’s sound is utterly distinct. The band started as friends playing late night jam sessions in the jnan dyal tamazirt in 2016; the name Meteor Airlines was inspired by the comets and planes they could see flying overhead at night. Although their first album from 2017 featured acoustic, English-language songs, the band’s sound in recent years has taken a darker and more dramatic hard rock turn fixated on themes of loss, pain, and nostalgia. “Lmosiqa dyal blad heavy shwia” lead singer Ahmed Ennassiri explained in a recent interview “fiha shwia dyal l9nt.” While they may take thematic inspiration from older Moroccan bands like Izenzaren, their sonic palette draws from a wider array of rock styles. The band’s intricately arpeggiated guitar chords are reminiscent of both Saharan blues bands like Tinariwen and American emo bands like Foxing. They mix these delicate instrumentals with the churning distortion of heavy metal and the triplet time signature of Amazigh folk music, producing a distinctly North African style of rock music which simultaneously gestures to both the past and future of the region’s indigenous people.
The band complements these unique visual and instrumental elements with lyrics that speak directly to the social issues of indigenous people in the Anti-Atlas and desert Southeast. The region has historically been poor and politically marginalized, leading to frequent clashes with the government. In the 1990s Amazigh activists were arrested in Errachidia for displaying signs written in Tifinagh, and protestors continue to boycott the Imidr silver mine not far from where the Ennassiri boys grew up. In Meteor Airlines’s songs, Ahmed’s mournful, raspy voice delivers poetic laments which reflect personal dramas as well as the area’s struggles with unemployment and neglect. The narrator of “Layhnnik a Baba” bids a tearful goodbye to his father as he leaves home to find work abroad. “A ɛawn rbi unna mi γʷran iṛumin ad iṛṛez isselli s lmaṣṣa (God help the ones the foreigners took to break rocks)” the band sings in their biggest hit “Tawada” “A tɛmiti a tnγiti addud a yma γuri (you’re blinding me, you’re killing me, come to me dear).” The crowd in Agadir sang along to these tragic lines with enthusiasm, finding ironic joy in their shared experience of suffering.
Amazigh pride is a central message of Meteor Airlines’s musical project, with songs like “Warru” paying homage to indigenous resistance to French colonization. On the Timitar stage, the band spoke exclusively in Tamazight and led the crowd in several impromptu chants of “Im-a-zi-ghen” in between songs. The audience in Agadir, composed mostly of Amazigh young people, delighted in seeing their culture represented on stage. University students waved Amazigh flags, and members of the Zagora-based band Tasuta n’Imal (who later performed on Saturday) could be seen leading a spontaneous a7idous dance line in the crowd. Such public celebrations of Amazigh pride, which not long ago carried serious risk of arrest, testified to both the unbreakable spirit of Morocco’s indigenous people and their important place at the cutting edge of the country’s music scene. It was nothing short of liberatory.
My favorite concerts are those where the band forces me to see them in a new light, and at Timitar, Meteor Airlines did not disappoint. After running through a string of catchy songs like “Awdyan” and “Aha,” the band closed their set with the relatively obscure 2019 single “Tayri.” In the live version, this nostalgic tale of lost love was transformed into an eight minute musical odyssey. After finishing the second verse, the band let loose with an extended instrumental jam which veered between virtuosic precision and the raw energy of hardcore punk. Guitarists Khaleed Ryad and Farid Ennasiri traded intricate guitar solos before drummer Ayoub Chamane cut in with pulsing percussion hits. This extended version of “Tayri” displayed a band at the height of their power, tightly synced through years of playing together and confident in their connection with devoted fans. It’s rare to see urgent political messages, ambitious artistic vision, and genuinely catchy songwriting bound together so cohesively. After this stunning performance in Agadir, the sky is indeed the limit for Meteor Airlines in the futur.
BEN JONES