Malḥūn, a genre of accompanied sung poetry popular across Morocco, bears close resemblance to classical poetic forms and the musical style of the country’s Andalusian tradition, al-āla. Many across the country love it irrespective of educational background or economic stature. The poorest Moroccans memorize long segments of their favorite texts, ready to sing upon request, while the wealthiest gather in hotel ballrooms to celebrate malḥūn as national cultural heritage. Past scholarship on malḥūn focuses on the texts’ form and content, with their unique register of Moroccan Arabic and dramatic themes of piety, love, and satire. The poems, however, are to be sung. Listeners and performers alike deride the repetitive music as unremarkable, comparing it negatively to the more sophisticated al-āla. I argue that the sound of performances and the musical elements leading to this perception of simplicity hold keys to understanding the genre’s prominent place in the country’s cultural sphere. Malḥūn’s popularity is borne directly from its flexibility: it simultaneously exists as popular music and high art. Changes in contemporary performance practice demonstrate performers’ successes in engaging new audiences, both locally and nationally. As with al-āla, malḥūn is experiencing a period of modernization and classicization through state sponsorship. The preservation of texts and musical performances coincides with productions celebrating malḥūn alongside al-āla. Musicians innovate by incorporating instruments and styles popular nationally as well as those desired by those audiences right in front of them. Many sounds clearly locate malḥūn performances geographically, using the music of popular religious brotherhoods to build clear (or, better put, loud) aural connections with local audiences. In this paper, I draw upon ethnographic research and my performance experience with a malḥūn ensemble in Fez, Morocco, to show these points of localization within the genre’s performance practice. In contrast to al-āla’s classicism, malḥūn artists maintain a high degree of flexibility. While singers and instrumentalists who perform both repertoires regularly look down upon malḥūn as simplistic, I argue that it is the differences between these two related musical systems that has given malḥūn performers the latitude required to truly adapt to the wants of their diverse and growing audiences.