The Tourist Gaze: Mohamad Zatari

This episode of The Sonic Turn podcast is titled The Tourist Gaze. It explores how sound, mobility, and inequality shape the ways places and people are perceived, and it includes an in-depth interview with composer and oud musician Mohamad Zatari.

This episode brings together critical theory, field recording, and political listening. It is grounded in John Urry’s seminal book The Tourist Gaze, which develops the idea of the gaze — a concept borrowed from Michel Foucault and Jacques Lacan — to describe how perception is socially organised. For Urry, tourism is not innocent looking, but a structured way of seeing that frames what counts as extraordinary and what remains invisible. As he writes, “people are looking for the extraordinary,” and these expectations shape how places, bodies, and cultures are staged and consumed.

Mohamad Zatari’s work — including his article The Politics of Adhān Aesthetics, published by The Attic — explores sound as power, audibility as politics, and identity as something negotiated through listening. Together, we reflect on Urry’s argument that tourism depends on socially produced expectations and ask what happens when the tourist gaze is reframed as a tourist ear.

In November 2024, I travelled to Marrakesh, where I made a series of field recordings in and around Jemaa el-Fnaa, one of the most intense public soundscapes I have encountered. During the day, the square feels abrasive and unsettling. Monkeys and snakes, trained by their human masters, are displayed as attractions — disciplined bodies performing for attention, tips, and cameras. These scenes are central to how the square operates as a space of spectacle, where sound, movement, and obedience are choreographed for the tourist gaze.

This experience resonates with the critique articulated by Jawad Moustakbal, a Moroccan activist and writer, member of ATTAC/CADTM, in his article “Marrakech, world wealthiest’ banquet hall, receives main makers of poverty and injustices in the world”. Moustakbal argues that Marrakesh has been profoundly reshaped by extractive tourism, writing that “its culture and identity have been lost as everything in it has become adapted to the orientalist requirements of tourists, especially Westerners.” The city becomes a stage for global elites and visitors, while everyday life is pushed aside.

At night, Jemaa el-Fnaa transforms completely — and becomes extremely crowded, busy, and saturated with tourists. The square turns into a dense field of movement and sound, where almost every local interaction is tied to an attempt to sell something or to offer assistance in exchange for a small tip. As a Western, white visitor, you feel immediately visible — and, paradoxically, more vulnerable — constantly addressed, guided, stopped, priced.

It was in this atmosphere that, one evening, I went to the square intending to make field recordings. I carried my recorder in my backpack the entire night — and never took it out. I realised that a microphone is not just a technical device; it is a visual object that instantly negotiates power, attention, and perception. Taking it out would have meant making myself more exposed than I already was, so instead I chose caution. Despite having exchanged euros into dirhams — both banknotes and coins, ready for tipping musicians — I couldn’t find a context that felt right. I felt too visible, too exposed, and decided, for that night, to remain a simple observer. I listened, mapped the territorial divisions between different musical groups, and paid attention to aesthetic and sonic details. String instruments were amplified using electricity from car batteries, layered with heavy percussion — usually five or six percussionists per group — each ensemble carving out its own acoustic territory.

The following night, with slightly more courage — or perhaps just resignation — I tried again. I approached a group whose performance was just beginning and where the crowd was still thin. I sat down on a bench and placed a few hundred dirhams into the tip box. Apparently, this was more than the usual contribution. The person in charge of collecting tips noticed immediately and discreetly alerted the lead musician, who was about to start playing an amplified, violin-like instrument powered, once again, by a car battery.

I placed my recorder on the ground, mounted on a small stand, and let it run. As the crowd slowly gathered, the rhythm intensified. At some point, while continuing to play, the violinist walked towards me and gently placed his instrument on my left shoulder — still playing. I couldn’t quite read his expression. Was it gratitude? Approval? A subtle assertion of dominance? Maybe all of the above. I froze — unsure how to react — but I was relieved that he allowed me to record the entire piece. I didn’t move. I tried to look like someone who regularly has amplified violins placed on their shoulders in public squares. I failed, but discreetly.

What became clear is that tipping is not optional. It is vital to the functioning — or sometimes the bare survival — of this informal musical economy. The musicians of Jemaa el-Fnaa are deeply dependent on tourism, just like much of Marrakesh’s population, caught in an economy where sound, labour, and attention are constantly exchanged.

Musical styles are spatially separated. In some areas, Gnawa musicians, rooted in Black Moroccan histories and spiritual traditions, perform trance-based repertoires. In other parts of the square, Moroccan chaabi groups, associated with Arab and Amazigh popular cultures, animate crowds with loud, rhythmic music. Each sonic zone marks ethnicity, history, and belonging, while also responding to the expectations of circulating tourist audiences.

The sensory experience is overwhelming: the smell of grilled meat and spices mixed with dust and exhaust fumes, flashing lights, intense colours, overlapping rhythms, shouted invitations, clapping, laughter, voices calling you closer, and the sound of coins hitting metal plates. Perception fragments. You are constantly being addressed, priced, and repositioned.

Amid this density, I repeatedly hear the adhān, the Islamic call to prayer, rising above the square. Its appearance temporarily reorders the sonic hierarchy, cutting through music and noise and connecting the plaza to a wider religious and urban soundscape.