Arabian Violence: Censorship in Morocco’s Techno Underground

This chapter describes how the Moroccan state uses cultural diplomacy to promote their rich cultural heritage and censor the discontent. In a discussion of the international performance of “Morocco” as presented by the Moroccan state, I analyze how the tensions arising out of that performance are grappled by Moroccans in Morocco. This chapter examines the contemporary underground social world of industrial techno music that Moroccan youth are creating for themselves and its potential as a zone of political action and social change. This chapter argues that industrial techno musicians and their communities are non-state actors that present a view of Morocco that complicates the state’s presentation of itself as largely Arab, folkloric and classical. Through an analysis of electronic music produced in Morocco that is not endorsed by the state, and ethnographic material obtained by interview and participant-observation research conducted between 2018 and 2023, this chapter demonstrates how artists in Morocco are composing and producing music that exemplifies the pains and boundaries that Moroccans experience in their everyday lives and how performing it at underground techno parties has created a community of listeners and participants who have cohesive, alternative understandings of Moroccan society that resist the state’s objectives.