This book reframes the history of the Andalusian music of Morocco by highlighting the interplay of oral and literary processes in the preservation and transmission of this poetic-musical tradition across generations. Although oral communication and the social intimacy it fosters have been highly valued by participants in the tradition throughout its evolution from the elite music of Islamic Spain to its present status as Morocco’s national classical music, over the past two and a half centuries, written anthologies also have evolved as iconic representations of the tradition that function alongside the oral processes without replacing them. Davila brings a new approach to studies of the social foundations of Arabic poetic traditions by proposing a “value theory of tradition” and arguing that this “mixed orality” within the boundaries of the tradition persists because the two embody distinct but complementary sets of values.