Moha Mallal

Born in Tamalte, in the Dadès valley, Moha Mallal wrote his first poems in the 1980s and recorded guitar cassettes that circulated among university students; at the time he listened to the Kabyle singers Idir and Aït Menguellet and spent time with activists of the Amazigh cultural movement (Granci). In the early 1990s he performed in Goulmima at the invitation of the association Gheris, later Tilelli: this is where the genre later called “Amun Style” took shape.

To explain the name, he links Amun, the god whose temples stand at Siwa, to the Amazigh word “tamunt”, union; this is his own interpretation, which Granci reports without checking it. A visual-arts teacher in Ouarzazate, a painter and a caricaturist, he produces his albums at his own expense and shares a small studio with other artists; “Amersal”, “salt land”, is his eighth album.

Tawargit's leader names him as the first south-eastern musician to have received IRCAM's national prize for modern Amazigh music, and Morocco World News dates that prize to 2007. The band Mallal describes itself as founded in 1992.