AWAL is an art and research project dedicated to collecting, archiving and reactivating oral poems, music and stories with a focus on the Moroccan Atlas and southeast regions. Through this listening session and discussion, AWAL presents research and extracts of poems or songs comparing genres and styles between two neighbouring tribes, the Ait Bougmez and the Ait Atta. Using a "poetry map" they developed through field work and workshops with various researchers and artists, they attempt to unveil the vernacular differences and complexities of communal artistic creation. Although AWAL focuses on Amazigh peoples (indigenous peoples of North Africa), their research ultimately gives a glimpse of the cultural heterogeneity which existed in pre-industrial rural Europe and beyond. In the end, this session hopes to demonstrate the futility of states' attempt to create a "national culture."

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