Guardian Arcticle on Brian Jones 40th and 2009 Festival by Mark Paytress / Images by Jill Furmanovsky print editions 29th May 2009

Take me into insanity

In the Moroccan mountains, village musicians gather each year to worship the goat-man Boujeloud ... and Brian Jones. Mark Paytress joins in the wild party

Joujouka Brian Jones Festival 2008 Joiner Image by Jill Furmanovsky/Rock Archives

Joujouka, a village nestled in the foothills of the Rif mountains in northern Morocco, has been attracting enlightenment-chasing subversives and sonic novelty-seekers for decades. They are drawn by its Sufi trance music, played by the Master Musicians of Joujouka on a pipe called the rhaita and a drum called the tebel. In the 50s, Paul Bowles and William Burroughs visited, and the latter concluded: "We need more diabolic music everywhere." Timothy Leary proclaimed the Master Musicians to be "a 4,000-year-old rock'n'roll band". And in July 1968, Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones dropped in to record the village's Boujeloud - or Rites of Pan - festival.

That gruellingly intense annual night of music, magic and fertility still takes place every year, though the village has changed since Jones's visit: it now has electricity and a mobile phone mast that dwarfs the minaret of the mosque. Much, however, remains medieval: there is no running water, and the climate and landscape still dictate how life is lived.

When Jones's recordings were released posthumously in 1971, as The Pipes of Pan at Joujouka, the village gained a new level of fame - the guitarist was followed by more musicians, including Ornette Coleman - and Jones himself gained a new status in the village as a near-saint. Last July, I was among 40 or so westerners who went to Joujouka to mark the 40th anniversary of his visit. I often heard the Master Musicians chanting "Ah, Brahim Jones, really stones" as they worked through a rhythm.

The idea to commemorate Jones's trip came from Frank Rynne, a frequent visitor to Joujouka since he stumbled on its music at a Burroughs-related event in Dublin in 1992. "Brian Jones is so revered here that I felt the anniversary of his visit should be marked," Rynne says.

However, the festival long predates Jones. Its origins lie in the legend of the goat-man Boujeloud bestowing the gift of music on the village in return for the hand of one of its women. Every year, the festival pays homage to Boujeloud in order to guarantee the village healthy crops and purposeful procreation. Much has been made of the magic and transcendence associated with this ancient fertility rite, but its real purpose is to heal. "Yes, the music makes people go into a trance," Master Musician Mohamed el Attar tells me, "but it also heals souls. Psychopaths get better when they hear it. That is the secret of this place."

As the ceremony begins, I follow the nine magnificently attired Masters - resplendent in yellow hats, white collarless shirts and dark, one-shoulder robes - as they make their way down a long, dusty track to a gently lit corner of the village square, where some 120 villagers and visitors are gathered. Without realising it, I perch upon the same rock Jones sat on 40 years ago, as the Masters hit their transcendent stride.

A group of watching youths, some dressed in baseball caps and logo-emblazoned T-shirts, bounce boisterously in front of the bonfire. Women huddle in the shadows. When the rhaitas, sounding something like a herd of aroused elephants, nudge up a semitone, the tingle factor really kicks in. A trick long favoured by a generation of superstar DJs is, it seems, as old as time itself.

Then out hops the sprite-like Boujeloud. Hours ago, he was the soberly attired master of the house where I slept. Now, this apparition in a straw hat and goat-skin is mad-eyed and rubber-necked; he thrashes me with a pair of olive branches. My fertility apparently secured, at least for another year, I leap to my feet and join in this primal scream of a party. For five long hours, these rhythms and rituals play out against a backdrop of spitting bonfires, screams and the endless high-jinks of Boujeloud. At about five in the morning, it winds down. "Boujeloud" is back in his bum-freezer jacket and handing out cups of mint tea to the small handful of us who have survived this exhilarating, extraordinary but exhausting musical endurance test.

When Brian Jones returned to London in August 1968, he spent hours in the studio doctoring his tapes with psychedelic effects (mainly phasing), in an attempt to accentuate the far-outness of an experience he likened to "an incantation to those of another plane". Many later sonic adventurers, working in jazz or rock or experimental music, have drawn inspiration from the music of Joujouka. Even the Stones milked what Mick Jagger admitted was "a tenuous musical connection" by using the Master Musicians on their 1989 Steel Wheels album.

Since that time, artists from the village have travelled to the west - drawn as much by the financial as the spiritual rewards - to perform music from Joujouka and the surrounding region. As we drive off at dawn the following morning, the first of the day's five calls to prayer ringing in our ears, I wonder whether I have just witnessed a long, loud, final blast of a tradition that's now staring extinction in the face. But Rynne is more optimistic. He says the event has brought enough money and supplies to the village to keep the place thriving until the winter - and that's before the cash from a planned CD/DVD release rolls in.

"You saw the young men last night," he smiles, referring to the mass outbreak of Boujeloud-inspired mayhem. "It's impossible to my mind that those boys, growing up in the houses of musicians, won't one day be picking up drums themselves."

Maybe so. But whether they'll stay put in Joujouka rather than try their luck on the international stage is, of course, another matter.

• The 2009 Master Musicians of Joujouka festival runs from 5-7 June. Details: joujouka.net

Master Musicians of Joujouka jajouka Ireland 1980 film

This footage was shot by Bob Quinn for his Atlantean documentary series.
Quinn broke new ground in his exploration of the connections between North African and Islamic culture and the Celtic musical and artistic traditions and folkloric traditions.
Here we see the Master Musicians of Joujouka /jajouka performing in Castlebar Co. Mayo in the remote west of Ireland.
In 1994 Frank Rynne producer of The Master Musicians of Joujouka talked to the then 82 year Mujehid Mujdoubie in Joujouka.

--------------------------

"After a few meetings Mujehid asks where I am from. Mohamed Attar, known as Ansari, had been to Dublin for The Here to Go Show and said Dub..Linn. I said Ireland. Mujehid started laughing.
"I've been to Ireland with Rickki (Stein)."

Hamri asks some questions. After Mujehid has talked a while Hamri asks me "
What's this swimming pool full of milk Mujehid says he saw in Ireland."
I am baffled but then I discover this pool was on a big farm and made of aluminium. "
That's just the storage cooler for the milk that all big farms would have, to keep it cool before it's collected."

Mujehid says, "no, it was too much milk for that, millions of litros."

" But that's how much milk a few hundred cows would give a day. Ireland is a big dairy producer."
" The cows here in Joujouka, if you were lucky would give you half a cup a day at this time of the year, this is why he can't believe you. " said hamri
The milk is soon forgotten as Mujehid has remembered a big deficiency he had noted in the Irish. It turned out that one day the Masters Musicians of Joujouka went to a big estate somewhere in the west of the country to help heal a young girl with their music. The musicians duly played the Rites Of Boujeloud and the healing music of Sidi Achmed Sheich and an improvement was noticed in the girl. The next day the girl's father took Mujehid to the town and bought him a goat for the musicians to kill and eat. Mujehid set off alone towards the big house holding the goat. He was not given to carrying goats in his arms. In Joujouka you simply walk behind them and they generally behave. Where would they go to ? He set the goat down. This Irish goat, full of the spirit of rebellion, took off down the road like a bullet. Mujehid chased it back into town. He eventually lost sight of the musician's dinner. He came up to some of the natives but soon discovered that not one of them had a word of Magrebi, not a single word. Mujehid tried to mime what had happened making horns on his head with his fingers, but no one could work out what he wanted and he never got his goat back. Years later in Joujouka he wants to know one thing, How come those Irish people couldn't speak Magrebi? http://www.thehandstand.org/archive/j...
Master Musicians of Joujouka Festival 2009, Joujouka, Jajouka, Morocco. June 5-7 2009 Booking Now on
http://www.joujouka.net

A Rolling Stone’s Moroccan odyssey

Joujouka during the Brian jones Festival photo by Marc English

This article was published last year prior to the Brian Jones 40th Anniversary Festival in Joujouka. There are two segments of music and some great images from the festival on the Master Musicians of Joujouka Myspace Photos. See blogs for more info.

This year's festival takes place on the weekend of 5-7 June in Joujouka and guest will saty in the beautiful mountains of the Ahl Srif in the houses of the musicians and their families. This is an oppurtunity to come to Joujouka and see hear the World famous home under open stars. Enjoy the food of the mountains and rejoice in the The Master Musicians of Joujouka celebration of life through music with the people of Joujouka.
Booking Master Musician of Joujouka website


Click on newspaper to read original article.

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A Rolling Stone’s Moroccan odyssey

The Irish Times
22 Jul 2008

WHEN I FIRST visited Morocco in 1994, I took a one-way charter flight to Malaga and a ferry across the Straits of Gibraltar. On one side of the Straits were the burnt hills of Southern Spain, on the other the high colossus of the Rif Mountains. Soon I...read more...

Tech Tags: The Irish Times newspaper Life Features

Tuesday, July 22, 2008
A Rolling Stone's Moroccan odyssey
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The group's founder member Brian Jones's obsession with the haunting music of Joujouka is to be recalled at a Moroccan festival in his honour, writes Frank Rynne .

WHEN I FIRST visited Morocco in 1994, I took a one-way charter flight to Malaga and a ferry across the Straits of Gibraltar. On one side of the Straits were the burnt hills of Southern Spain, on the other the high colossus of the Rif Mountains.

Soon I was standing in the ship's restaurant being inspected by curious frontier police in line with Djellaba clad men, women in fine silk robes and the odd backpacker. Having had my passport stamped in Arabic script, I could stay up to three months. Arriving at Tangier port, I was assailed by offers of taxi rides, protection, and beggars. The contrast with the sedate south of Spain could not have been greater.

I made my way to the Café de Paris to meet Hamri. Hamri had famously brought Beat writers Paul Bowles, William Burroughs and the painter Brion Gysin to his village in the 1950s. In the 1960s, he had taken Rolling Stones founder Brian Jones and LSD guru Timothy Leary. By 1973, Ornette Coleman, the inventor of "free jazz", had made the same pilgrimage to visit the Master Musicians of Joujouka. The musicians were described by Burroughs and Leary as a "4,000-year-old rock'n'roll band". According to Gysin, the musicians held a secret, hidden even from themselves: they still practised "the Rites of Pan under the ragged cloak of Islam". The "ragged" referring to the musicians' poverty.

The Master Musicians of Joujouka are Sufi trance musicians from a tiny village in the Southern Rif Mountains. They play a form of trance music which is used for healing. Each year in the village, a boy is sewn into goat skins to dance as Boujeloud, who appears to Westerners as Pan. The flute-playing goat god is the protector of shepherd boys who brings fertility in springtime. The musicians play ancient music to drive Boujeloud back to his cave. With the beast appeased by their music, they can expect a good harvest. Women touched by his flailing palm fronds will bear healthy children.

Hamri took me to his studio, where beautiful paintings hung in various stages of completion. Soon the smell of linseed oil and canvas was penetrated by cumin, coriander and chicken as Hamri prepared his famous harira soup.

The next morning, we took a series of taxis to Joujouka, making the last leg of the journey on foot, up a steep impassable track. We were laden with meat, tea, sugar, mint and other basic provisions for the musicians, the mosque and the sanctuary of the village's patron saint. Since the 9th century, Sidi Ahmed Schiech's sanctuary in Joujouka has been a place of pilgrimage for the Ahl Srif tribe.

I first met the Master Musicians in 1992. I helped bring them to Dublin to participate in the Here to Go show at the old Project Arts Centre. The show, in honour of Gysin, was the first joint exhibition of his and Burroughs' paintings. Gysin had invented the Cut-Up method of writing which Burroughs famously used to deconstruct the modern novel. Burroughs said of Gysin: "He was the only man I ever respected." He died in 1986 having never achieved the recognition that Burroughs felt he deserved. Hamri and Gysin had exhibited together in the early 1950s. Having heard the Master Musicians of Joujouka, Gysin abandoned the Western art scene and spent 23 years in Morocco to be close to them and their music. It was Hamri who suggested that an art show for Brion would be incomplete without Joujouka music.

At Hamri's house in the village, the musicians began to arrive singly and in small groups. I was overwhelmed by the welcome I received from the musicians who had been to Dublin. Soon a large group of cloaked men were sitting on the veranda. Tea was brewing and a tagine of lamb was slowly bubbling. Bamboo flutes, drums and sepsi pipes for smoking kif, a mix of mild marijuana and home grown tobacco, were produced.

The music began with long plaintive notes segueing into repetitive refrains and hypnotic drumming. This music is haunting and unworldly. They played the tunes left by their patron saint, which the musicians and their ancestors have played for centuries to heal illness and mental disturbances. They continued for several hours until dinner was served on a large plate from which we all ate communally.

After the meal, the musicians produced long mahogany double reed horns called rhiatas, which are similar to oboes. Their massed sound carries for miles in the little hills of the Ahl Srif.

The musicians use long extended notes and utilise circular breathing techniques. The horn players divide into sections and play extended loops following a lead section. They are loud as any rock band.

IT WAS MY LOVE of the Rolling Stones and, in particular, the enigmatic talents of their founder Brian Jones, that first made me aware of Joujouka. In 1982, I saw the Stones in all their stadia glory at Slane Castle. The subtle elegance of Jones' 1960s experiments with Eastern rhythm and instrumentation had been replaced by the hard edged, over-sexed blues rock that conquered the American mid-West.

Last week, I asked Anita Pallenberg what had set Brian Jones apart. "He was a renaissance man and a blues man, way ahead of his time," she said. Anita had famously been Brian's girlfriend when he entered a spiritual decline. Since his untimely death in 1969, the rock world has become all too familiar with such sensitive souls being crushed by the demands of an over-commercial oeuvre.

On July 29th, 1968, Gysin and Hamri brought Jones and his engineer George Chkiantz to Joujouka to record the Masters. For Jones, the experience was to dominate the last year of his life. His obsession with the music of Joujouka was yet another factor that distanced him from Jagger and Richards. Jones wished to incorporate it into the Stones's sound.

John Dunbar was a friend of the Stones's first manager Andrew Loog Oldham as well as Burroughs, Gysin and Jones. He remembers Brian on his return from Morocco coming to his flat to play the tapes. According to Dunbar: "Brian loved Joujouka and he hawked those tapes around trying to do something for the musicians. This really was going in a different direction from Mick and Keith."

Brian spent the rest of the summer preparing the art work and sleeve design for the LP. In the studio he experimented, playing the music out of synch. Jagger recently said that Brian's Joujouka experiments were the equivalent to scratching in the early days of hip hop.

In Morocco, Hamri, Gysin and the Master Musicians anxiously awaited the result of the star's labours. The musicians had received some money and they hoped that Brian's interest would rescue them from poverty by making their music popular in the West.

Hamri and Gysin had spent the 1950s and 1960s keeping the village going by employing troupes of musicians to play at their 1001 Nights restaurant in Tangier. Later, Hamri opened a second 1001 Nights in Asilah. It was in the latter that Jones first came to know the music and the musicians. Hamri would tell stories from his village to a reclining Jones. When Hamri would assume that Brian was asleep and stop his story, Brian would say in an English accent which Hamri imitated in recollection: "And then?" And the stories continued.

When the Rolling Stones set up their own record label in 1971, the first release was Brian Jones presents the Pipes of Pan at Joujouka . The cover painted by Hamri features Brian in the centre of the Masters. Some friends felt it was the least they could have done for Brian.

Over the last decade-and-a-half, I have visited Joujouka nearly 50 times, recording three CDs. Nearly all the older musicians who played on the Brian Jones record are now dead. Ahmed Attar, who at 12 years of age drummed on Pipes of Pan , leads the group in the village.

An old musician, Mujehid Mujdoubi, once asked me: "Why do you Irish people have swimming pools filled with milk, when the cows in Joujouka give barely one cup a day?" Having been to Ireland in 1980 as part of the group that appear in Bob Quinn's Atlantean documentary, he was referring to a modern dairy farm so different from Joujouka's medieval agriculture.

IN 2006, BILLY Corgan of Smashing Pumpkins contacted me and came to the village. I was on my way there anyway to bring the group to Casa Da Musica in Porto. After a week, he felt the music was the loudest and most intense acoustic music imaginable.

The lure of stardom led one musician, Bachir Attar, who emigrated to New York, to claim he was the hereditary leader of the musicians. Although he was a toddler in 1968, this claim was readily accepted by music business executives, leading to Brian Jones' LP being reissued in 1995 but bringing no benefit to the village. Hamri's original cover art was replaced with by a contemporary photograph of Bachir. All mention of Hamri was excised from Brion Gysin's original sleeve notes. Bachir trades under the eponymous "Master Musicians of Jajouka featuring Bachir Attar". In contrast to the musicians in Joujouka, he states he likes to work in the studio.

On July 29th, the Master Musicians of Joujouka host the Brian Jones 40th Anniversary Festival in the village square. Fifty Westerners will join the villagers for the festival of Boujeloud, celebrated to highlight Jones' contribution to the village and promote peace. Last year, the musicians built a two-room guest house for visitors. The legacy of Jones still affects the music and musicians.

A standard song now in the village repertoire is Brian Jones Joujouka Very Stoned . The lyrics go: "Joujouka mezyana b sseyyed dyala (Joujouka is good because the Sanctuary is powerful)./ Oh Brian Jones Joujouka very stoned, Oh Brian Jones Joujouka Rolling Stone."

• Master Musicians of Joujouka present the Brian Jones 40th Anniversary Festival in Joujouka, Morocco.

www.joujouka.net

• Frank Rynne has produced three CDs of Master Musicians of Joujouka, Joujouka Black Eyes (1995), Sufi: Moroccan Trance (1996) and Boujeloud (2006). He is an historian currently researching the Fenians and the Land War 1879-1882.

Original ad for Brian Jones presents the Pipes of Pan at Joujouka released on Rolling Stones Records in 1971.

Master Musicians of Joujouka Festival 5-7 June 2009 Joujouka, Morocco

Master Musicians of Joujouka Festival 5-7 June 2009 Joujouka.
Booking Master Musicians of Joujouka website
The Master Musicians announce their summer festival will be held 5-7 June 2009 in their village in Morocco. Guests will stay with the musicians and their families and experience three days and nights of ritual Sufi music in its natural setting. On Saturday 6 June the musicians will perform the Boujeloud ritual in the village square through the night. In July 2008 the Master Musicians of Joujouka hosted the Brian Jones 40^th Anniversary Festival in their village in the southern Rif Mountains of Northern Morocco. The festival was a celebration of fortieth anniversary of Brian Jones’ recording the iconic LP Brian Jones presents the Pipes of Pan at Joujouka (Rolling Stones Records 1971). The festival brought the families of old Masters now passed on and a group of visitors from abroad including old friends of the errant Rolling Stone.

Guests will experience life in Joujouka staying with the musicians and their families in their isolated village. The Master Musicians of Joujouka willplay in intimate sessions around their madrassa/school. The highlight of the festival wwill be the village’s celebration of the Boujeloud ritual in the village square.

Places at the festival are strictly limited as due to accommodation limitations with the families in Joujouka/Jajouka. Guests will be collected from Ksar El Kebir the nearest town to Joujouka on Friday 5^th June and will be brought to the village. Full board will be provided. Food will be prepared in traditional Joujouka fashion from locally sourced produced. Joujouka is a framing community well as Sufi trance music the village is famous for its beautiful olives and olive oil.
The festival is booking now. The early
bird price is €250 euro.
Accommodation for 5, 6, and 7 June

Full board lunch and evening meal on Friday 5 June
Breakfast, Lunch and traditional Moroccan mountain feast on Saturday 6
Breakfast, Lunch, and evening meal Sunday 7^th

Booking now on Master Musicians of Joujouka Web Site
For payment by credit transfer please email me for details.
Places are limited to 75.

If you have any questions please do get in touch. joujouka@gmail.com

The Master Musicians of Joujouka being interviewed fro Mojo magazine July 30 2008.
The oldest musicians from Joujouka /Jajouka mallim Ali Abdelsalm El Attar talks to Mark Patytress. (photo Marc English)

Boujeloud, July, 2008 copyright Jill Furmanovsky/Rock Archive

"You Should be Trancin'" Mojo Oct 08 Report on Brian Jones 40th Anniversary Festival in Joujouka Words Mark Paytress new photos by Jill Furmanovsky PDF link to "You Should be Trancin'" Mojo Oct 08

Article by Frank Rynne on Brian Jones 40th Anniversary Festival , Irish Times, 22 July, 2008

Plus
BBC World Service The Beat
Frank Rynne chats with Anita Pallenberg on Brian Jones, Mark Paytress on visiting Joujouka, Ahmed Attar leader of the Master Musicians of Joujouka on the spiritual music of the village and Mallim Ali Abdelslam El Attar who at 94 is the oldest musician in Joujouka talks about Brian Jones and the old Mallims who recorded Brian Jones presents the Pipes of Pan at Joujouka.>All recorded at the Brian Jones 40th Anniversary Festival in Joujouka. "Forty years ago, guitarist Brian Jones, one of the founders of the British rock band the Rolling Stones, travelled to northern Morocco to record a group known as the Master Musicians of Joujouka. The resulting album, 'Brian Jones Presents the Pipes of Pan at Joujouka', not only had a lasting effect on the musicians themselves but went on to become hugely influential after being released on the Rolling Stones
own record label. We hear from Frank Rynne, a record producer and historian who recently visited Joujouka to record the Brian Jones 40th Anniversary Festival."BBC World Service Report From The Beat

To download or play Clip Click Here

Master Musicians of Joujouka Festival 5-7 June 2009 Joujouka, Morocco

This years festuival runs from 5-7 June 2009. Booking now on www.joujouka.net




Photo Jill Furmanovsky/ RockArchive

Book Now places limited for 5, 6 & 7 June 2009.

Music, photos, and slide shows from the Brian Jones 40th Anniversary Festival in Joujouka 28- 30 July 2008 on
Master Musicians of Joujouka Myspace

Master Musicians of Joujouka website and Booking

Joiner image by Jill Furmanovsky/ RockArchive

A Rolling Stone’s Moroccan odyssey (The Irish Times, 22 Jul 2008, Page 17)

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A Rolling Stone’s Moroccan odyssey

The Irish Times
22 Jul 2008

WHEN I FIRST visited Morocco in 1994, I took a one-way charter flight to Malaga and a ferry across the Straits of Gibraltar. On one side of the Straits were the burnt hills of Southern Spain, on the other the high colossus of the Rif Mountains. Soon I...read more...

Tech Tags: The Irish Times newspaper Life Features

A Rolling Stone’s Moroccan odyssey (The Irish Times, 22 Jul 2008, Page 17)

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A Rolling Stone’s Moroccan odyssey

The Irish Times
22 Jul 2008

WHEN I FIRST visited Morocco in 1994, I took a one-way charter flight to Malaga and a ferry across the Straits of Gibraltar. On one side of the Straits were the burnt hills of Southern Spain, on the other the high colossus of the Rif Mountains. Soon I...read more...

Tech Tags: The Irish Times newspaper Life Features

الاحتفال بمرور 40 سنة على زيارة فرقة الرولينغ ستونز برايان جونز لزهجوكة

Rosemary Woodruff Leary on Visiting Joujouka in Septenber 1969

The Master Musicians

By Rosemary Woodruff Leary

Pan, Bou Jeloud, the Father of Skins, dances through the moonlight nights in his village., Joujouka to the wailing of his hundred Master Musicians. Down in the town, far away by the seaside, you can hear the wild whimper of his oboe-like raitas; a faint breath of panic borne on the wind.

Brion Gysin
Liner notes from the album Brian Jones Presents The Pipes of Pan at Joujouka

Timothy and I spent September of 1969 in Tangier. One night Paul Bowles and Brion Gysin told us about the musicians of Joujouka who lived high in the Rif Mountains. The Master Musicians were priests of Pan, who celebrated the ancient rites of the goat god and the local goddess, Aisha, the beautiful, the blue-faced one. Brion told us that his friend, the Moroccan artist Hamri, could take us to the Master Musicians, the Ahl Serif, as they were the tribe of his mother.
We started from the sea, at Tangier, on a clear fall afternoon, in a succession of taxicabs, each more decrepit that the last, we headed toward the Rif Mountains. When one driver had gone as far as he would go, we’d find another. In villages, Hamri disappeared into crowded marketplaces and reappeared within a few minutes laden with oranges and packages, and trailed by the owner of the taxi that would take us to the next outpost.
We reached a checkpoint at a dusty fort on the barren plain where Hamri’s ‘cousin’, the local Commandante, allowed our passage. We were in the middle of nowhere, and our driver was reluctant to continue, but Hamri harangued and cajoled him until at last he agreed to take us into the foothills of the mountains. After miles of jouncing on a steep rutted road, the driver stopped and would not continue. We gathered our packages, paid the driver, and started on foot up the mountain path in the early evening light.
From across the slope of the mountain a shepherd boy watched us. He stood on one leg, the other leg bent and resting on his thigh, his arm crooked around his staff. Hamri called out to him. The boy leapt into the air, waved his staff, and took off running up the mountain. ‘A cousin’, Hamri told us. ‘He’ll tell the village and perhaps they’ll send the animals. We’ll rest here’. We waited, and soon a group of villagers descended to meet us. A woman offered golden apricots from a fold in her cloak. Hamri exchanged greeting with everyone, waving his arms to include us. The villagers insisted on carrying our bundles and packages up the mountain.
The sun lit the distant peaks. Soon we saw the village, the whitewashed walls of low houses turning blue in the darkening light. A few dim lamps glowed from the doorways. Hamri led us to a long and low white building with a porch. He said it was the schoolhouse, built with funds that he and Brion had given to the village.
We left our shoes on the porch as the men did and ducked our heads to enter the schoolhouse. Hamri introduced the men but it was impossible to keep up with their names. The last man stepped from behind a taller companion. ‘Berdu’, Hamri said with emphasis. Berdu, the smallest and surely the poorest among the village men, shambled down forward. He reached up and took off an imaginary plumed hat and made a sweeping, courtly bow to me. I curtsied, and everyone laughed. The village idiot, I presumed. I thought he looked simple.
We were invited to be seated in a corner of the room that was heaped with embroidered pillows. The kerosene stove hissed in the far corner, and shortly we were served sweet mint tea in small glasses. Hamri talked quietly with the men. Their clothing was simple: shirts and pants with a mix of European and handmade, always ragged cloak, and one could occasionally glimpse the embroidered bags the men wore beneath their cloaks.
Eggs and flat bread were served all around. After we’d eaten and the tin dished were collected and cigarettes exchanged, the men opened the embroidered bags and pulled out simple reed-stem pipes and, to our delight, packages of finely-cut kif. Hamri and Berdu shared their pipes with us. The kif was fresher and greener than any I’d had in Morocco.
A man took a violin back from England. The violinist smiled and began to pluck a reel. Penny whistles joined the violin and Berdu stepped into the aisle. He hitched up his cloak and held it with one arm. With the other arm behind his back he danced a sailor’s jig until the violinist turned the reel into Flamenco. Berdu became a self-important torero who, with a twitch of his cloak then became an imperious woman trailing flounces as the music became a Gypsy wail.
She opened her mouth to sing an impassioned lament, the violinist rose, swaying to accompany her; then the violinist interrupted the voiceless song to correct the glowering opera singer who stood before us. The violinist was now Paderewski, enraptured by his own music. Berdu snapped the baton in disgust and stalked away. He returned as an old woman carrying an invisible heavy bucket. With great effort, he lifted the bucket and dashed the contents onto the head of the violinist who continued to ignore him and finished the real and wonderful music. The violinist then wiped his brow and sat down to everyone’s laughter and applause.
Tim and I looked at one another. I reached into my own embroidered bag and discreetly took out two tabs of LSD. I placed one into his mouth as though I were placing a kissed fingertip onto his lips, and I put one into my own mouth. We swallowed the LSD with sweet green tea.
Berdu, with a surprisingly deep and resonant voice, began a prayer. ‘La Illah Allah Allah’. The men responded, ‘Mohamadu Akbar’.
In a conversational tone, the prayers continued, Berdu commenting, it seemed, on the village, the animals, and Hamri, who bowed his head to gentle laughter. Berdu directed us through prayer to laughter to a sense of closeness. There was a time of silence. We heard a few gentle coughs, a distant tinkle of bells. People stirred, shifting positions, and Berdu sat down among us. We could no longer see him.
‘Who is he?’ I asked Hamri.
‘Berdu, the Master’, Hamri replied.
‘The Master?’
The Master Musician of Joujouka’.
I needed to step outside. I found my boots on the porch lined up with the men’s backless leather slippers. I started to put on my boots, but a man I had not noticed before waved his hand dismissively and pointed to the men’s slippers. I nodded my thanks and put on the nearest pair of slippers. He motioned to my left and I followed a path out onto a gently sloping field. I was facing a star-filled sky. There were no electric lights to dim thye stars. Everything I saw was as it had always been, timeless.
I could hear the goats’ bells, and their strong smell told me they were nearby. I pulled a cluster of white wool that had been caught on a bush. As I walked back to the long house I rolled it between my fingers, effortlessly drawing the silky tuft of wool into a fine strand of thread. When I returned to the long house I was reluctant to go back inside to the room of men, to the air heavy with kif and tobacco smoke and kerosene. I wondered what the village women and children were doing.
Hamri stood in the doorway, backlit by the kerosene lamps inside. He beckoned to me to join him and the men. He led us out over a slight rise to a small clearing between the hills where brush was being piled onto a crackling fire. ‘Stand here’, Hamri said, placing us 10 or so feet from the fire. To our left, a row of hooded men took long wooden horns from patchwork bags. Behind them stood a group of men with drums, each drum aslant across the chest, held with thongs. They carried curved slender rods in their right hands, and in their left hands, heavier wooden sticks, the top ends carved in relief spirals like ram’s horns.
The night was still except for the fire which threw sparks into the darkness. The hooded men lifted their horns, and a thin piercing sound from the oboe-like instruments was sustained for an incredibly long time, maintained by the subtle joining of one horn to another, as no single breath could be that long. I travelled the brighter, larger, and then the horns went higher, taking me almost to the point of pain, then the music swirled into a skirling bagpipe sound whose rhythm the wind had torn away.
The drums, silent until then, boomed into being, a thudding heartbeat of rhythm. My breath was caught by the horns; my pulses by the drums. Was this music, or was it the thunder of mammoth hooves, screams of birds of prey? It seemed the very tempo of life in my body. Eardrums could be shattered. Hearts could burst from these sounds. The drums built a wall that contained the reed instruments. The reeds descended into a weaving ribbon of silver notes, playful to the drums’ assertive tempo, seductive, cajoling, demanding rhythms.
A creature leapt over the fire to confront the musicians. He was tall, powerful, barely covered by tattered clothing. His face was concealed by a deep straw basket adorned with antler-like branch-arches curved so high that his feet were hooves. Trailing branches in his hands, flailing the air, his pelvis thrusting, he was goaded by the music. He whirled around the fire, pausing once to glare at me with a goat’s horizontal eyes. The creature struck me with the branches. Struck me or anointed me, I don’t know which.
‘Bou Jeloud’, Hamri said.
Pan lives, I thought.
A slender figure in a blue-spangled dress came from the shadows. Arms curved, veils aswirl, her hips swaying with seduction, she turned before the Bou Jeloud. He followed her dancing form, leaping before her as she teased him with her veils. She played with him, turning him around and around, mocking him. Abruptly she was gone and the creature confronted the musicians, but they taunted him with their rhythms. He danced before them, controlled by them. The drums reverberated through the mountains. The horns’ high notes seemed to come from everywhere. Bou Jeloud bucked convulsively, howling in anguish that Aisha had left him. The drums slowed; the horns were one pure fading note. Bou Jeloud scattered the fire with his flails and disappeared into the black night.
Later, at the schoolhouse, Berdu brought former Bou Jelouds and Aishas to the center of the floor to demonstrate and mime their styles. He made fun of all of them, showing how one of them had grown too stout, another too clumsy. Hamri said they were chosen while very young for training, and that characteristics they showed as children determined which role they would play.
And then I danced for them. Not that I wanted to, or even thought that I could, but my usual inhibitions were lessened by LSD, and there seemed to be silken threads tied to my ankles and wrists that Berdu controlled ever so surely. And the music was irresistible. Penny whistles, violin, and softly tapped drums drew me to my feet. For a few moments I was Aisha to Berdu’s gently mocking Bou Jeloud. There were shouts of ‘Musicienne!’ and ‘Encore!’ when I sat down. I rose again, but the magic that had descended upon me was fading and I had become self-conscious. I pretended to stumble, and fell back into Tim’s lap, and we all laughed.
We left on muleback the next morning. All the way down the mountain I could still hear the drums in my head, and I could hear them at will for many years. The memory of the music that night reminds me that for a brief, magical time, I was a ‘musicienne’ among the Master Musicians of Joujouka.

Excerpted from The Magician’s Daughter, a work-in-progress.
From: Psychedelic Trips for the Mind, edited by Paul Krassner.