Mezoued

Tunisian bagpipe-driven street music, popular for decades whether or not the radio would play it.

Mezoued takes its name from the instrument: a goatskin bagpipe with a piercing, unbroken tone, played over bendir and darbouka with a singer on top. The songs deal with work, migration, prison, drink and love, in a register no state broadcaster wanted to put its name to, and it spent most of the twentieth century outside official Tunisian airplay for exactly that reason.

It never needed the help. Mezoued moved on cassette, at weddings and in cafes, and it still fills rooms as reliably as anything in the country.

Contemporary artists have pulled it in two directions at once: back toward the traditional repertoire, and outward into rap and electronic production.