Midnight Spotlight: Paul Bowles Returns to Moroccan Airwaves

 

TALIM Paul Bowles CD Moroccan music 11623 Donut Proof

As a very nice spinoff from last week's Radio Tangier interview, tonight Thursday 9 February will feature a special two-hour Paul Bowles program, midnight – 2:00 AM (Morocco time or GMT; this would be 7:00 to 9:00 PM Eastern Standard Time).

Listeners across the world can tune into Moroccan National Radio Alidaa-Watania and/or Radio Tanger (you may need to install plugins) on the internet, or through satellite radio, on Hot Bird 13o East (10872 Vertical; Symbol Rate 27500).

We are told that this late-night program is a favorite of MREs – marocains résidant à l'étranger – overseas Moroccans in places from LA to Lisbon.

TALIM Director will be part of a panel discussing various aspects of Paul Bowles and his 52 years of residence in Tangier, during which time he became almost synomymous with the City on the Strait.  We don't know the makeup of the panel yet, though it is likely to include some Tangier literary figures.

Journalist and poet Abdellatif Ben Yahia will moderate, and a good choice he is: he knew Bowles personally, and was a close friend of Bowles' fellow writer Mohamed Choukri.  Most panelists are likely to focus on what Bowles is best known for here in Morocco, his voluminous writing on this country, including such well known works as The Sheltering Sky.

We will focus on an equally important but oft-forgotten aspect of Bowles, Renaissance Man.  His music – not only his numerous compositions, but his monumental work in 1959, criscrossing Morocco to record its traditional music for the Library of Congress, what Bowles described"as diversified a body of music as one could find in any land west of India."

Gerald Loftus

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