19 minute read
Mahmoud Chouki
“A New Orleanian, Born in Morocco”
MAHMOUD CHOUKI TRAVELED THE WORLD WITH HIS MUSIC, BUT HE FOUND HIS HOME IN LOUISIANA
Mahmoud Chouki traveled the world with his music, but he found his home in Louisiana
Alexandra Kennon
It's a Thursday night at Carrollton Station, and on stage with three New Orleans musicians, Mahmoud Chouki deftly removes his brimmed hat, liberating a few animated dark curls as he raises his guitar behind his head, his wiry fingers never once faltering in his swift, intricate, and pleadingly-emotive picking of the complex melody. He completes the phrase, triumphant, and lowers the instrument back to his knee, laughing and flashing a broad smile to bassist Noah Young, then back to his rapt audience. In a bit, after the set was technically billed to have finished, he will excitedly tell them, “Let’s go to Morocco!” as he trades his guitar for an oud, the lute-like Middle Eastern stringed instrument, and begins to sing in Arabic.
Chouki’s is not an act you expect to find in a neighborhood bar in the Riverbend, yet that Thursday night, he plays to a full and fully-captivated audience for three hours—alternating between improvising with the other musicians and playing his original music, Young’s original music, covers of songs by progressive American jazz artists, and by the end, the Moroccan folk tunes. In between songs and sips of IPA, he shares anecdotes from his global travels. “I was supposed to come to New Orleans for four days. I stayed for two weeks,” Chouki laughs, then proudly announces, “Now, I’m a New Orleanian.”
On the Monday evening before Chouki's performance at the Station, he told three-hours-worth of stories to another rapt audience, of one. The two of us were settled in a red velvet booth at the Columns Hotel & Bar on St. Charles Avenue—his suggestion—as he shared the remarkable tale of how he went from a Moroccan guitar prodigy to calling Louisiana home, his guitar and oud cases resting at our feet.
Chouki’s life began in a port city nearly 8,000 miles from New Orleans. In 1984, he was born in Kenitra—a place he hardly recalls because at the age of two, he moved with his parents up Morocco’s Atlantic coast to Larache.
In Larache, which was formerly colonized by Spain, Chouki’s early memories were underscored by the sounds of Spanish radio programming—especially the music, particularly flamenco.
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His parents loved music, too, and their collections of Arabic and Middle Eastern classics filled their son’s young ears, supplementing the flamenco and Spanish songs with music closer to that of his own roots—like the Lebanese superstar Fairuz, Egyptian vocal icon Umm Kulthum, and Egyptian singer and composer Mohammed Abdel Wahab. His uncles also played music, though not professionally, and would sometimes travel from Casablanca with a full band to play for special occasions. And, even in northern Morocco, Chouki’s early influences were rounded out by his father’s affinity for western hits by the Beatles and the Eagles.
“So, growing up in the north of Morocco was kind of lucky because it was like, on a crossroad of cultures— between north, south, east, and west. And so very open to all kinds of music,” Chouki explained. As a young child, he was always tapping away with his fingers, singing, and dancing. At seven years old, Chouki’s parents enrolled him in the Moroccan Ministry of Culture’s after-school music conservatory program, housed in a historic church. About a year into his schooling, he was still searching for an instrument when, like fate, he found the guitar.
“It was kind of a dreamy thing. I walked, and then the door opened, and there’s like, lights. There’s a guitar teacher, surrounded by kids and having fun and laughing, and I said—” here Chouki gasped dramatically, his eyes wide under his round double-rimmed glasses, emphasizing childlike wonder, “‘—I want to do this!’ That’s why I switched to guitar. It was not because I loved guitar. It’s just, I saw that fun moment, with the teacher and the kids, and that’s what attracted me.”
After a year of study with that guitar teacher, at age nine, Chouki and his family moved to the coastal town of Temara, in pursuit of the opportunities that came from being so near to the nation’s capital of Rabat— which included the chance for Chouki to study at the Conservatoire National de Musique et de Danse in the capital city, a much more serious learning environment than that of the music school in Larache. “It was very strict. And it had a lot of kids,” he remembers. By the time Chouki was in middle school, he was performing with the conservatory’s kids’ orchestra.
In 1998, at age fourteen, Chouki was chosen as one of four young musicians to represent Morocco in a Meeting of the United Arab Emirates in Sharjah. He came in second-place for his singing and playing. When he returned to Morocco, the whirlwind of his first international performance continued. He was invited on Moroccan television programs, and demand to see him perform was high. “I was kind of a little star. And it just kind of started being problematic, because I have school also.” His parents started turning down the invitations for their son to play, to prioritize his life and education beyond music. “I remember people coming to the house, like begging my parents,” Chouki said. “It was very hard. And then, yeah, everything starts being harder in high school. Because … I love music. I want to do music. I want music to be my life.”
In an act of rebellion against his parents’ desires for him to focus on school, Chouki took up the electric guitar and started a band with some friends. He quickly learned that his peers were far less interested in complicated works of classical guitar than they were contemporary Western music. “In high school I discovered that, like, I can’t seduce the girls with a classical guitar,” he tells me, a laugh bubbling up again. “So, I needed to learn more modern stuff.” Chouki accepted the challenge, and taught himself Metallica’s “Nothing Else Matters” in its entirety in a single night. He didn’t stop there, quickly mastering songs by Nirvana and the Eagles, too. His parents couldn't afford to buy him his own electric guitar or effects pedals, so when his band had a show, he would practice on his classical guitar, then borrow his friend’s electric guitar for the concert.
Western rock wasn’t the only genre Chouki branched into during that time—he began playing more North African music, and attributes his strict teacher at that time, Ibrahim Iabloul, with helping him to greatly improve his hand technique on the guitar.
Ultimately, Chouki discovered a particular affinity for Spanish guitar music of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. “Because at this moment, I knew that I loved melody. I love the melody. I love hearing something beautiful, I want to play something beautiful to my ear first,” Chouki told me. “For me, it’s very important to me to enjoy music, so I can share it … if you like what you do, it’s easy to share it with everyone. You don’t need any force.”
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At eighteen he traveled with the conservatory’s guitar ensemble on a two-week trip to Andalusia, Spain to play. “I was always the youngest, I was always like, hanging with older people and older musicians.” The last day was the international guitar competition, for which Chouki played a piece of Spanish music on the guitar. When they announced that he won first prize, he burst into tears. One of the judges told him, “You know why you win? Because you are crazy. You came to Spain, and you played a Spanish song in your way," Chouki remembered. “And that was the moment for me to say like, ‘Okay,’ I had the confirmation that I can play whatever I want … From that moment, I said like, I will listen to my heart, and what I want to do, and I will do it. And nothing will stop me. From this moment, everything’s changed in my life.”
After graduation, Chouki went on to participate in the Moroccan Minister of Education’s new program offering education degrees with a specialization in music. While engaging in his studies at the university in Rabat—learning piano, Arabic music history, psychopedagogy, and more—he was also gigging, often playing for only around $15 a set, happy it would afford him a pack of cigarettes.
While still gigging and enrolled in the university program, he accepted an invitation from friends to teach a group of young guitarists in Tangier. He spent nearly a year traveling between the two cities every few days. “I lived my whole life in trains in Morocco,” Chouki said. “It was awesome. And I’d discover other people that would give me another opportunity, and that’s like how actually my life is …” In each new place, at each new gig, with each new student, he made connections that opened more doors and opportunities.
When he graduated, the government sent him to Northeast Morocco to teach music to middle schoolers “which was a big shock for me because I am young. And I am like a government employee, like I’m a teacher. And this wasn’t the dream I had. I just was like, ‘Oh, shit. No.’ I love teaching, I love the kids— but like the system in general is like, ‘Okay, you’re done. You’re good. You have a salary. You have benefits. Do your life.’”
For him, it wasn’t enough. Within a year, he left his teaching job to travel across Morocco, in pursuit of learning more about his own musical heritage. His parents could not understand why he would leave such a respected and stable job. “My family was very proud for me to be a teacher …and then I said, ‘I’m leaving. I can’t—I want to be a musician, I want to be an artist.’ So, it was very hard. And it was kind of like a separation.”
But he knew his calling was to travel, and to play music. So he set out, seeking masters who could teach him to recreate the sound of the loutar on his guitar, to harmonize in different ways, and to imitate sounds from various regions. “I want to be kind of an ambassador of my music,” Chouki explained. “So, I can make my music accessible to the occidental ear.” He says that following the creative restrictions of his classical training, this period of traveling and connecting with Moroccan folk music “unchained” his soul. “And then I became like, a machine of composing, of playing music, of having fun.”
With this freedom, he found himself able to return to the concept of teaching, offering guitar lessons for a time in Casablanca—Morocco’s bustling economic capital—to a whole group of kids he proudly tells me have since grown up to become doctors, lawyers, writers, and even some professional musicians themselves, living around Europe. “When I’m touring in Europe, they come to see me.” During this time, he was also hired as the casting director for the 2007 film Whatever Lola Wants, and was tasked with hiring dozens of international musicians for big concert scenes. “That’s when I found my thing: Connecting people.”
In 2012, these connections led to one of Chouki’s most exciting and enduring projects. Assaad Bouab, a French-Moroccan comedian and actor, called. Bouab had recently crossed paths with someone in search of a Moroccan guitarist for a project.
The project was an international music collaboration called Rencontres Orient Occident, held in the hâteau Mercier in Switzerland. Over a decade since, Chouki has remained involved in the annual event, returning to the Chateau each year to participate in, curate, and even serve as music director for the nowfamed cultural exchange.
Before that, though, back in Casablanca, Chouki started spending time at a club that played Latin music from Chilé, Peru, and Columbia. He started going for drinks and to listen, but before long he was regularly on stage, which led to a tour, and then to other tours with other artists from other places. Which led to recording sessions. “So then, my life was—“ here Chouki makes the sound of an explosion, creating the effect with his hands, his long fingers bursting out from each other.
To show an example of the way various connections, from all over the world, have come together to enrich his career every step of the way, Chouki pulled out his phone to show me a photo, pointing to someone he identifies as “the friend of the composer” who scouted him for a 2011 symphonic performance at the opening of the Qatar Art Museum. This friend currently lives in Indonesia, and they’ve played in Bali together before. “Music is so crazy,” he said.
At this point in our conversation, jazz pianist and composer David Torkanowsky approached our table, greeting Chouki with “I know a rockstar when I see one!” before hurrying off to play a show with Stanton Moore and James Singleton in the other room. Interactions with well-established locals like this pepper our lengthy interview, exemplifying how—after a lifetime spent playing music all over the the world—Chouki today is fully enmeshed in New Orleans. And how, in turn, the city has embraced him with its signature warmth.
On his first trip to the United States in 2015, he embarked on the obligatory American road trip: trav eling from Asheville, to Nashville, to Memphis; jamming with musicians and checking out the scene for a few nights in each city. When he arrived in New Orleans, his plan was to stay for four nights. The first night, he attended a show at Maison, a favorite Frenchmen Street venue, that featured jazz guitarist and University of New Orleans professor Brian Seeger with A.J. Hall on drums, Oscar Rossignoli on keys, and Nathan Lambertson on bass. “I had never heard music like this in my life. I was just like—“ he gasped, clutching a hand to his chest. “I was like, ‘I would love to play this music one day. I want to play it so bad.’”
When the gig was over, Chouki, who didn’t yet speak English, had his girlfriend at the time translate a brief conversation with Seeger, and he gave Seeger his business card. Seeger went home, looked Chouki up, and immediately sent Chouki an email inviting him to speak to his jazz students at UNO, followed by a home-cooked meal of crawfish étouffée. Shortly after, Chouki got to join Seeger to play the same music he’d heard at Maison: New Orleans jazz. “And for me, that was like a dream became true.”
I asked him, after hearing and playing so many styles of music in over thirty countries across the world, what was so different about the set he heard at Maison that night. Without any hesitation, he said, “It’s the quality of the musicians of New Orleans. With all respect, I’d never heard that before. I’m talking about jazz now—I’m used to European jazz. I was in Nashville and Memphis, there’s mostly country, blues, Americana. But now, I arrived to New Orleans, and I was hearing jazz. Something I’d just heard on You tube and CDs, and now I am in front of it,” Chouki said. “For me, it’s blown my mind.”
That four days in New Orleans turned into two weeks, then Chouki left the United States for two years. When he returned, he did so to make New Orleans his home. He began workshopping with students at UNO, thanks to Seeger, and playing shows at Frenchmen Street’s intimate jazz club Snug Harbor. “I am grateful that I came to New Orleans by the big door,” he told me, referring to Seeger’s influence, even despite their language barrier.
That kind of natural connection is a theme throughout Chouki’s life. “It’s my North African roots and North African education—we are naturally friendly … for example, I think I’ve cooked for almost all New Orleans,” he laughed, and I told him that’s a great way to win New Orleanians over. “I’m not doing anything because I’m seeking a service, like you owe me … it’s just natural. I grew up like this, hosting people … if you go to North Africa, you will understand.”
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In 2019, the New Orleans Museum of Art asked Chouki to compose and curate musical performances to accompany their first international contemporary exhibition of its kind, in musicians from across the world, all living in New Orleans—like cellist Hellen Gillet, guitarist Sam Dickie, and double bassist Martin Masakowski, among others. The performances, collectively titled Safar divides, and in turn created a dialogue between the music and cultures of the East and the West.
Also around that time, New Orleans-based Vietnamese-British filmmaker Marion Hill contacted Chouki, asking if he would compose the score for a film she was working on. She hadn’t written the script, yet—she was hoping to be inspired by the music, which would in turn inform the dialogue. By the time filming for Ma Belle, My Beauty in the south of France, the majority of the score was already written. When the film finally premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2021, it earned the Audience Award. “When I watched it on the big screen, to have my name as music composer … it’s kind of like, it was a big moment, an achievement.”
That moment of achievement, for an immigrant across the world from where he was born, echoed the life-changing affir mation Chouki felt at age eighteen as the winner of the international guitar competition in Spain. His takeaway was, “Noth ing can stop me. I can do this, I can do whatever I want.”
At the same time, opportunities in New Orleans continued to roll in: NOMA asked him to continue to curate their musi cal performances, then the Marigny Opera House reached out to ask him to compose something on the oud, in collabora tion for the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra, for the venue’s reopening post-COVID.
He had never written a concerto, or any piece for the oud before, but eagerly rose to the challenge; composing a concerto for the oud and a seventeen-piece chamber ensemble, all inspired by the city of New Orleans. He wrote part of his certo for New Orleans while having the distinctly New Orleans experience of missing the city from a hotel room, evacuated after Hurricane Ida.
“I love challenge, and I am okay if I fail,” he explained to me. “The more I go from my comfort zone, the more I have pleasure.” In Morocco, he said, he would not have been given the opportunity to compose for the oud or play it in concert, because he is primarily a guitar player. “Now, I would play this concerto in my country, I can play whatever I want.”
These days, as a music teacher at Lycée Français, New Orleans’ French Immersion Charter School—Chouki is able to find a fulfillment in education that he couldn’t during his early teaching stint in Morocco. “Now I have a lot of things to share as a teacher. Not just teaching music, but being also a role model. So that’s why, like a lot the parents tell me, ‘You’re not just teaching, you’re not just giving information to the kids, but like, inspiring.’ So that’s actually what I want—I want to inspire them to be maybe an artist.”
Chouki’s next love letter to New Orleans is already underway. At the New Orleans Jazz Museum, for their label Gallatin Street Records, he is recording an album packed with New Orleans legends: John Boutté, Troy Brooks, Sr., Herlin Riley, Jason Marsalis, and Dr. Michael White were confirmed when we spoke; with an impressive list of others he’s awaiting confirmation on. The album will include New Orleans jazz classics like “St. James Infirmary”, along with Chouki’s original music. The goal is to eventually tour with the record, as well as to create a film about the recording process.
“This will be kind of a story within a story about a Moroccan who arrived to the city, don’t speak the language, don’t know anyone. So, like how my life changed here, how people are welcoming,” he explained. “It’s the story of everyone, [from] outside of this country or outside of the city that’s come here and loved this city. And give to the city, and the city give to them. And for me, this album for me is to give back … this city keeps me here, like all the time, and I love it.”
And for someone who considers himself an ambassador of his music and culture, and places so much emphasis on connection, New Orleans is a place that makes sense— because of the singular connection between musicians and their music, musicians and each other, and musicians and their audience, who are also their friends. “I’m very proud to hear from some locals or artists that I’m part of the music scene in New Orleans now. And like, I’m so proud to hear that. I’m so grateful for the opportunity I have here—you can’t imagine how I am proud. It’s like, New Orleans! Shit! New Orleans, the best music city in the world! And I’ve traveled around the world! But now, I travel around the world, and I say I live in New Orleans.”
As he gears up for his second Jazz & Heritage Festival performance in May of 2023, prepares his upcoming album with the Jazz Museum’s label, and continues his regular jobs teaching music to New Orleans kids and playing New Orleans venues, Chouki recalls a conversation he had with a local cab driver when he first arrived, before he spoke much English at all. He told the driver he was Moroccan, moving to New Orleans, and the driver told him, “Everyone in the world is born a New Orleanian, and the luckiest ones come here.”
“So, I am a New Orleanian, born in Morocco,” he told me, smiling wide.
Find Mahmoud Chouki’s music on Spotify.
