In the oasis, there is a poetic music called Ahalil which you can hear in formal or informal gatherings.
Ahalil is a poetic music which is sometimes compared to the better known style of Sufi music. Ahalil poetic music praises the beauty of nature and women.
Ahalil is also a form of religious praise. It is an oral record of regional heritage and a way of life for the people of the oasis.
Ahalil means praise. The songs can be secular, recounting tales or histories of the oasis or devotional and religious poems. The origin of the music begins with wise men singing and reciting poems about the oasis culture.
Ahalil music is a key part of a way of life that has survived for centuries. There are many poems about water and the importance of foggaras.
Fresh water is necessary for all living beings and the oases are the results of an ingenious system of harvesting the limited underground water, through an ancient system of canals and wells, the foggaras.
My grandfathers were part of an assembly callled the Djemaa. The people in this assembly managed equitably the foggaras. They took into account the domestic and irrigation needs of all the local inhabitants of the oasis.
The tobol is a drum of skin stretched over a flat circular piece of wood that is made and beaten as a call to music by the artisan of the oasis.
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