Aḥwash is a genre of singing and dancing emblematic of the tashlḥiyt -speaking Berbers of the Anti-Atlas and western and central High Atlas in Morocco. Performed in the open air during the mass village gatherings that punctuate agricultural, social, and religious life (marriages, circumcisions, and pilgrimages to the tombs of saints), it consists of improvised exchanges between individual poet-singers as well as choral singing in unison. The poet-singers, who must display mastery of both the vocal art and the prosody peculiar to this oral tradition, invoke the