Tuesday, July 2, 2019

Early Bird Tickets for Master Musicians of Joujouka Festival 5-7 June 2020

Boujeloud in Joujouka by Brion Gysin 1956
We are launching the Master Musicians of Joujouka Festival 5-7 June 2020 today on  the 50th Anniversary of the passing of Brian Jones.
As founder of Rolling Stones Brian was an icon in Western music, . In the world of Joujouka Brian is mythical and real in song and memory.

To book an early bird ticket at this year's price  for Master Musicians of Joujouka Festival 5-07 June 2020 use the drop down menu below to pay a deposit, 2 X deposits or 1 or 2 X full ticket


MMOJ Festival 5-7 june 2020

Sunday, July 22, 2018

Booking for Master Musicians of Joujouka Festival 21-23 June 2019


Last moments of Festival 2018 by Syd Howells



Booking is now open for the 12th editio of the annual Master Musicians of Joujouka Festival in Joujouka.
You can use the button below to pay for a deposit (non refundable) or a fyull ticket which is refundable minus deposit until 21 April 2019 after this date places are forfiet.
Tickets are non exchangable and may not be resold.
If booking for two places or more please email joujouka@gmail.com and provide the name and email contact for the other ticket holder.
The festival begins on Friday 21 June 2019 is limited to 50 full ticket holders.
Guests will be dropped off at El Ksar El Kebir on 24 June before 12 noon.
Places include accomadation and full board.
For more info email Frank joujouka@gmail.com
MMOJ Festival 21-3 June 2019
SOLD OUT

Tuesday, July 11, 2017

Booking open for Master Musicians of Joujouka Brian Jones 50th Anniversary festival 22-24 June 2018


The 10th annual Master Musicians of Joujouka Festival marks the 50th Anniversary of Brian Jones recording the iconic Brian Jones presents the Pipes of Pan at Joujouka in 1968.
The festival takes place from from 22nd to 24th June with dropoff on the morning of 25th June.
For info contact Frank joujouka@gmail.com


Master Musicians of Joujouka BJ 50th Anniversary Festival 22 June-24 June 2018. 






Tuesday, July 26, 2016

Book Now for Master Musicians of Joujouka Festival 30 June -2 July 2017, Zahjouka, Jajouka, Joujouka , Maroc




Boujeloud July 2016 by Unagami Takuya
The Master Musicians of Joujouka are pleased to announce that their 10th Annual festival will take place 30 June - 2 July 2017. You can reserve your place by using the paypal buttons below. Options are pay a deposit 70 euro, pay a full ticket and pay the balance after deposit.


 Rolling Stone on Master Musicians of Joujouka Festival 2015 Inside the Oldest, Most Exclusive Dance Party in the World
For info email Frank joujouka@gmail.com
Use drop down menu below to choose to pay a single deposit, 2 depositss,
1 or 2 full tickets and 1 or 2 balances after deposit.

Master Musicians of Joujouka Festival 30 June - 2 July 2017
Options to pay 1 or 2 deposits, 

Wednesday, July 20, 2016

The Master Musicians of Joujouka live Centre Pompidou Paris 14 Sept 2016

 The Master Musicians of Joujouka are proud to announce that they will appear at  Centre Pompidou Paris 14 Sept. 2016 as part of the Beat Generation exhibition in the Beaubourg. Tickets  18 euro.....


More info on Beat Generation  https://www.centrepompidou.fr/id/c58Xyrx/r95XLR6/fr
Master Musicians on Youtube https://www.youtube.com/user/mmojoujouka
Joujouka est un village isolé situé dans la région Ahl Srif, au nord du Maroc, où se crée cette musique remarquable issue d’une tradition soufi millénaire. En 1951, l’artiste Brion Gysin découvre cette musique à Tanger. Ebloui, il affirme vouloir l’écouter tous les jours pour le reste de sa vie, et la partage avec William S. Burroughs, qui les appelle un « groupe de rock n’ roll vieux de 4000 années ». Le pouvoir hypnotique et transcendantal de cette musique fascine les personnalités de la Beat Generation et alimente leurs recherches artistiques. Cette rencontre interculturelle donnera lieu à plusieurs collaborations musicales, dont un célèbre enregistrement avec Brian Jones des Rolling Stones en 1969.

En écho à l’exposition Beat Generation, douze musiciens et un danseur interprètent ce soir cette puissante expérience polyrythmique aux frontières de la transe. Les douze musiciens sur scène – dont sept ghaita, un instrument à vent – sont accompagnés d’un danseur qui incarne le rôle de Boujelod, une figure chamanistique, mi-chèvre, mi-homme, associée aux rites de fertilité, qui apporte le don de la musique, à travers une expression corporelle intense.

The Master Musicians of Joujouka : Ahmed El Attar; Mustapha El Attar; El Khalil Radi; Abdeslam Boukhzar; Ahmed Talha; Abdeslam RRtoubi; Abdellah Ziyat; Ali Ezouglali; El Touhami Talha; Mohamed El Attar; Mohamed Mokhchan; Mohamed El Hatmi; Ahmed Talha 
Producteur : Frank Rynne / The Master Musicans of Joujouka
Producteur délégué : Rikki Stein / Calm Before The Storm Ltd. 
Remerciements : Ministère de la culture, Province de Larache, Royaume du Maroc et le Caid de Tatoft.
Organisateur : DDC / Les Spectacles vivants, Serge Laurent
Link for tickets http://billetterie.centrepompidou.fr/Offres.aspx 

Saturday, January 23, 2016

Brion Gysn centenary

Boujeloud dances in Joujouka/jajouka by Brion Gysin 1958

Januray 19th 2016 was Brion Gysin's 100th birthday. Gysin was the mentor of The Master Musicians of Joujouka/Jajouka and the Moroccan artist Mohamed Hamri who ensured the Master Musicians form his family and tribe Ahl Srif came to world attention.
In the early 1960s Hamri brought William S. Burroughs to the village and there are many references to the Masters, Hamri and Boujeloud, styled Pan by Burroughs and Gysin.


Brion Gysin back left with the Masters in performance 1968-9

2016 will see many events globally celebrating Brion Gysin Stay tuned for more info. The Master Musicians of Joujouka Festival 15-17th July will celebrate Brion Gysin and his connection with the village and the music. For more info email joujouka@gmail.com

Boujeloud by Brion Gysin 1958

Monday, June 22, 2015

"Most Exclusive Dance Party in the World" Master Musicians of Joujouka Festival dates for 2016 15-17 July

The Master Musicians of Joujouka Fetsival will take place from 15-17 July and is booking now on www.joujouka.org.

and

Master Musicians of Joujouka Festival 15-17 July 2016

According to Rolling Stone magazine  the Master Musicians of Joujouka's micro festival is the Most Exclusive Dance Party in the World

see Suzanne Greber's

Inside the Oldest, Most Exclusive Dance Party in the World
JoujoukaRead more: http://www.rollingstone.com/music/features/inside-the-oldest-most-exclusive-dance-party-in-the-world-20150612#ixzz3dq9RjJCQFollow us: @rollingstone on Twitter | RollingStone on Facebook
High in the southern Rif mountains of northern Morocco, just before midnight, a buzz begins to radiate through the groups of sprawled attendees decked out in colorful robes, hippie skirts and flowing Western clothes. Wordlessly we edge up from supine to seated, and rearrange ourselves in casual semicircles, all eyes on the 13 men in ceremonial brown djellabas parading up the front of the stage, which is to say the carpeted chill-out area of a three-sided tent done up in red and green tribal fabric.



SIDEBARBrian Jones Rolling StonesBrian Jones: Sympathy for the Devil »Horn squeals and drum taps puncture the silence, come faster and gradually knit into melody and rhythm. A yowl of high-pitched ghaita horns pierces the air, reverberating from every direction, despite the lack of walls. Five different kinds of drums thunder into a rhythm, then syncopate and alternate, creating layers of polyrhythms.
Almost involuntarily, people make their way to their feet and begin dancing to the pounding drums, the energy among the audience escalating until it's reached the same fever pitch as the players'. And just when it seems like the music is reaching a climax, rhythms change, horns shift gears and the tsunami of sound starts to recede and slowly build all over again.
This continues for a couple hours, until just like that, the music stops. Dancers inch their way to their spots on the carpet as the musicians, still glued to their chairs, ritualistically refill their spindly wooden Sebsi pipes and smile beatifically at one other and at the audience, who are flashing Cheshire cat grins right back at them.
Welcome to the eighth annual Master Musicians of Joujouka "micro" music festival; held in the stunningly isolated Ahl Srif region of Morocco's Rif Mountains, it has become a destination event for impassioned fans around the globe. Each year, a growing number of musicians, world-music devotees and the curious stumble upon this tiny gathering (ticket sales are strictly limited to 50), many returning annually. They come to watch and dance to the village's 15 or 20 master (or malikim in Arabic) musicians performing the tribe's traditional music.
In the early 1950s, the Masters were renowned in their tribal region, but not much beyond. All that changed when writer Paul Bowles and Canadian artist Brion Gysin, based in the expat mecca of Tangier, stumbled upon the MMJ at a Sufi festival, fell in love with the music and befriended the Masters through their painter friend Mohamed Hamri, who had familial ties to Joukouka.
By making the MMJ the house band at their Tangier restaurant, Gysin and Hamri introduced them to the likes of Timothy Leary, William Burroughs and other American beats, as well as the Rolling Stones, which then included guitarist Brian Jones. Jones, instantly enamored, went on to produce their first album, Brian Jones Presents the Pipes of Pan, just before his death in 1969. Depending which source you believe, either Leary or Burroughs dubbed the MMJ "a 4,000-year-old rock & roll band."
Shortly after that, jazz saxophonist Ornette Coleman arrived to record with the Masters. In the 1980s, they played at England's Glastonbury Festival and elsewhere on a wild three-month tour. Slowly they built an international following, which came to include Frank Rynne from Dublin, who first visited the village in 1994 to produce a record (Joujouka Black Eyes) and has been their manager ever since, producing more albums, organizing tours and, for the past eight years, the festival.
* * *
Music's been an integral part of Joujouka since there's been a Joujouka. Much of the history is shrouded in the same mist that rings the mountain landscape every morning and after it rains. But there's consensus about the arrival of 15th-century Sufi saint Sidi Ahmed Schiech from Persia or Spain (a likely refugee of the Inquisition), who wrote music that had the power to heal disturbed minds. Today's Masters are said to be able to heal through that same music.
Then there's Boujeloud, a Pan-like half-goat man who's known throughout Morocco, and who, according to myth, gave the gift of flute music to the master musicians. Every spring, he would come out of his cave and dance during the "feast week" that honored the Sufi saint, and bring fertility. The man who's played this shamanic role for the past 47 years is an unassuming villager named Mohamed Hatmi. If you passed him on the dirt road, you might dismiss him as a simple man with little opportunity for self-expression. You would be very, very wrong.
Dressed in goatskin from head to knee, wearing a woven witchy hat and brandishing swaths of tree branches, gyrating onstage to the band's cacophonous fusillade, Hatmi-as-Boujeloud is larger than life. His hips operate independently from the rest of his perhaps four foot, 10 inch frame, and he seems to be plugged into some infinite energy source. He thrashes musicians and when he races up to children in the audience, the blood drains from their faces as they flee in terror.
As Joujouka's musical tradition has evolved from its tribal roots into an international concern, two factions have emerged who call themselves the Master Musicians. One group, led by Bachir Attar, whose father was the leader during the Jones era and who no longer resides in the village, has spent decades blocking the efforts of the local contingent (currently led by the bass drummer Ahmed el Attar) to call themselves the Masters and perform as such. It's been challenging for them, but ironically, has led to greater exposure and acclaim.
As Rynne puts it in his unmistakable brogue, "The festival began to give the Master Musicians of Joujouka a voice and a place where they could show people that they were truly the masters of their village and their music. For their own community, it shows the younger generation that there is a future in the music, as each year people come from across the world and show devotion to their parents' playing, culture and hospitality. And they want it to continue. They feel this music in their hearts; it's in their blood."
Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/music/features/inside-the-oldest-most-exclusive-dance-party-in-the-world-20150612#ixzz3dq9CZCbx


BOOK NOW for 15-17 July 2016 with drop off Monday 18th July WWW.JOUJOUKA.ORG




Friday, April 17, 2015

Record Store Day Special Release 1000 vinyl LPs Master Musicians of Joujouka Into the Ahl Srif

The first record of new material available on vinyl since 1978. Focusing on the trance-inducing rhaita music of the fertility rites of Boujeloud, this eschews the highly edited, special effects approach of Brian Jones Presents The Pipes Of Pan At Joujouka in favor of a raw, untampered transmission. This LP takes a closer look than ever before at the most cacophonous, droning, & deeply psychedelic side of their music. Available 18 April 2015


extract

Sunday, April 12, 2015

preview track Master Musicians of Joujouka new LP Into the Ahl Srif limited edition of 1000 available 18 April


The first new LP on vinyl of The Master Musicans of Joujouka since 1975 will be out 18 April to coincide with record store day. Recorded by acclaimed artist Adrian Rew see The Wire http://www.thewire.co.uk/in-writing/essays/easy-to-get-to_hard-to-leave
Into the Ahl Srif includes hard core performances form the Boujeloud ritual by the current traditional artist Masters of the village.
A preview is available on the Ergot Records soundcloud

The 8th Master Musicians of Joujouka Festival  June 5-7 2015 has some places left booking on www.joujouka.org
inquiries re booking, the festival and the LP email joujouka@gmail.com