Bghit ntir yama – I want to fly, O mother
This is the music video for a recent popular Moroccan song describing a Moroccan man’s process of thinking through whether to migrate to Europe. In the song, he sings about having no options left at home, being unable to find a job, and even being unsuccessful in dating. He also tells his mother to take care of his siblings if he dies on the way. In the video, he finally resolves to migrate to Europe, but then decides against it when he sees someone who looks just like him dead on the beach after drowning during the journey; thus he returns to his parents, who had been worried about him.
I like the video because it describes the current widespread situation of migration from Africa to Europe from the perspective of one of the migrants; I feel that it is rare to hear such a perspective, since I usually hear about African migration to Europe either from the perspective of Europeans or from a journalistic perspective in newspaper articles that describe journeys like this ending in tragedy (with the migrants drowning, etc.). Even though this is a pop song, and thus, the lyrics were probably not written by someone in this kind of state of desperation, it is still probably the only piece of music I have heard written from such a perspective.
I feel like I could use this in a class unit which discusses migration to Europe as an example of material which tries to explain what drives people to migrate to Europe from Africa despite the dangers involved in the process. It would have to be in a class which incorporates Moroccan dialect, however, since the song is in Moroccan dialect.
This video gets really dark really fast! It’s crazy because the music seems so upbeat and happy but the message is clearly very sad and shows a dark reality. The video also shows a lot of pollution – which might making a foundation for a discussion about the environment? (That might be a stretch, but just a thought). The home he lives in seems to be in a more urban and crowded area.
Something ironic about the video is that this man is living his normal life – eating at local digs while the singer is sitting in fancy restaurants and standing at beautiful panoramic vistas. That alone might be a starting place for conversation of how society values celebrities and how celebrities try to make their image be perceived as wealthy and well-off.