About
Master Musicians of Jajouka
The Story of the Master Musicians of Jajouka, MoroccoJajouka is an ancient village perched above a long valley in the blue Djebala foothills of the Rif mountains in northern Morocco. Once upon a time—a time before history —when the past was remembered in words and music recited in the fire-lit dark—a group of migrants, perhaps from the Phoenician settlement of Lixus on the Atlantic coast, made their home on the Mountain of Owls in the gold-green foothills of the Moroccan Rif. There, above the winding valley of the Loukous, a music was born in the magic and mystery of the darkness which for years beyond counting has survived, absorbing all influences that have come along, from Roman Gods and Islamic Saints, to the development of a modern Moroccan kingdom.
The inhabitants of this small village are from the Ahl Sherif ("the saintly") tribe. The Attar clan of Jajouka is the founding family of Jajouka and keepers of one of the world's oldest and most unique surviving musical traditions. The music and secrets of Jajouka have been passed down through generations from father to son, by some accounts for as long as 1,300 years. The musicians of Jajouka are taught from early childhood a complex music which is unique to Jajouka, until they finally become malims or masters. They possess baraka, or the blessing of Allah, which gives them the power to heal, and the endurance required to play some of the most intense and complex music around. The Master Musicians of Jajouka are all descendants of one family, the Attars. Attar is a Sufi watchword and a deeply mystical name meaning "perfume maker".
Two of the great influences on the Beat Generation, Brion Gysin, the painter and inventor and Paul Bowles, the writer and composer, first heard the wild music of Jajouka at a moussem or festival near Sidi Kacem, Morocco, in July 1950. Gysin was spellbound and he determined to hear this Sufi trance-like music for the rest of his life.
Tangier, Morocco was then an International Zone, where anything could and did happen. In this adventurous climate, in 1954 the painter and writer Brion Gysin opened the now-legendary and popular 1001 Nights restaurant in Tangier, located in a wing of the Menehbi palace on the Marshan. Gysin hired the Master Musicians of Jajouka to perform, dance and serve to a largely international clientele. Those were the days of Beat writer William S. Burroughs' Interzone, described in his book The Naked Lunch. Paul Bowles first formally introduced Brion Gysin to William Burroughs in 1957, and Burroughs also visited the tiny village.
Brian Jones Presents the Pipes of Pan at Jajouka
Brian Jones Presents the Pipes of Pan at Jajouka
In 1968 Brion Gysin brought his close friend Brian Jones, the founder of of The Rolling Stones, to Jajouka. Tragically, Brian Jones drowned in 1969, a month after returning from Morocco, and the album he recorded, Brian Jones Presents The Pipes of Pan at Joujouka, was released two years later in 1971. (The Rolling Stones reissued this album in 1995 with the correct spelling of the village today—Jajouka. The Rolling Stones still own the copyright on the Pipes of Pan.) The original LP album was very influential and led to scores of people visiting the village in the following years, including the jazz saxophonist Ornette Coleman, who recorded the track "Midnight Sunrise" in Jajouka for his 1973 album Dancing In Your Head.
The Master Musicians of Jajouka are often described as the first "World Music" group. The Master Musicians recreated music from their most important religious holiday, the Aïd el-Kebir, and Brian Jones eagerly recorded seven hours of their captivating, complicated sounds. It was this annual festival which led Gysin to believe that there was a connection between the ancient rites of Pan, the Roman fertility festival of Lupercalia, and the local tradition in Jajouka of a young boy dressing as Boujeloud (the goat god, father of skins), dancing madly, whipping the villagers into a frenzy and ensuring their health for the coming year.
The Master Musicians of Jajouka play a number of traditional instruments, including the ghaita (the Arabic version of the oboe), the lira (a bamboo flute), and the gimbri (a three stringed lute), along with double-headed Moroccan drums. This music is comprised of several fairly simple parts, which are then intricately woven together in a way foreign to most Western ears, so that the resolution of individual phrases and sections can be difficult for outsiders to discern. The music can be extended indefinitely, and many performances last for hours at a time, with some musicians taking breaks and others stepping in to take their place. The music of Jajouka has always been highly respected and sought after by those living in the region.
It is possible to classify the music into four differing styles as detailed below.
1. Boujeloudia—The Pipes of Pan. "When the new moon, before setting, announces that the month-long fast of Ramadan is at an end, the villagers of Jajouka know that Boujeloud will be upon them. That night, Boujeloud (the one wearing skins) is not only covered in goatskin but also has the branches of trees and bushes strapped to him. A high bonfire is built at the center of the village square. The only light will come from its flames. Once the raitas begin to play, there is never even a split second of silence for the rest of the night. There is no singing, only the strident shrilling of the twenty or so oboes supported by the inexorable rapid drumming. One does not see Boujeloud arriving. He is suddenly there between the fire and the ring of spectators, a shadowy figure slapping his bare feet on the earth. In his hand the dancer wields a branch, and with it he occasionally strikes a female spectator. The screams caused by his gesture are covered by the music. Indeed, the music has now intensified its sound by sending half the players to the highest register where grace notes and appoggiatura around the melody become a shrieking hysteria. What began as a concert has become a visible spectacle, a ritual. This metamorphosis having occurred, the element of time is no longer present. Eventually, when the watcher's tension lessens, Boujeloud disappears in the same way he came into the ring. The spectacle has returned to being a concert, the performers have entered into the notes they are playing, and it is now that they produce the most impassioned and exciting moments of the night."—Paul Bowles.
The rites of Pan were certainly performed in Jajouka and elsewhere in pre-Islamic times. Its significance here is that this pre-Islamic survival is unique in the glimpse it provides of a tradition and a spirituality that was common to us all before the advent of organized religions.
2. Chamsa ou Chamsin (Fifty-Five). The Master Musicians of Jajouka have in their possession sealed decrees which gave them title to play for the reigning Sultan of Morocco. This music is completely different from the impassioned Boujeloudia and is played on small bamboo flutes, gimbri, violin and drums. They rode at the head of the army and heralded the Sultan's arrival in a new city. This music was also responsible for waking the Sultan, playing him to sleep at night and in general for creating the atmosphere in which the Sultan lived and consequently ruled his subjects. These decrees addressed the musicians with extraordinary respect and set them free from all labor, allowing them to collect a tithe on all the crops grown around Jajouka. This vital task was lost at the beginning of the last century with the partition of Morocco when Jajouka found itself on the wrong side of the frontier and cut off from their monarch.
3. Chadra. Even when the Jajouka musicians are touring a small cadre always remains in the village where each Friday morning they play at the sanctuary of Sidi Ahmed Shirke, a local saint who is credited with bringing Islam to the valley of the Loukous. It is said that this holy man plowed his field with a team of Berber lions, a feat which inspired the Jajouka insignia, a lion created through the calligraphic weaving of sacred text from the Qu'ran. It is usually forbidden in the Islamic world to play music on Fridays, and this sole manifestation of music on the day of prayer is indicative of the importance attached to this ritual. Shirke was also a healer, and he taught the musicians a form of music which heals afflictions of the mind and spirit. Passed down from father to son for more than eight centuries this form of therapy still draws afflicted people from the surrounding region and often further afield in the hope of a cure.
4. The Music of the Djebala. The everyday folk music of the Rif, played on gimbri, lira, violin and drums. is a gentler, quieter style of ethereal beauty.
There is a legend surrounding Boujeloud: if he ever ceased to play his pipes, then the world would come to an end.
The Master Musicians of Jajouka are all descendants of one family, the Attars. Attar is a Sufi watchword and a deeply mystical name meaning "perfume maker". Long before the current Alaouite dynasty of Moroccan Sultans, the Master Musicians traveled with the sultans as their Royal Musicians. They rode at the head of the army and heralded the Sultan's arrival in a new city. They had very old papers from the king which spelled out their duties and rights at the palace: to play the king to bed at night; to play for him in the morning; and to play at the mosque when he went to pray. These papers were renewed when the Alaoui family, the ancestors of the current Moroccan king, came to power. The papers addressed the Musicians Musicians with extraordinary respect and set them free from all labor, allowing them to collect a tithe on all the crops grown around the village.
The Master Musicians were the Royal Court musicians for seven kings of Morocco prior to Morocco's occupation by France and Spain. People travel to Jajouka on pilgrimage to visit the shrine of the holy man Sidi Ahmed Sheikh, who brought Islam to the valley centuries ago. It is said that this holy man plowed his field with a team of Berber lions, a feat which inspired the special Jajouka insignia, a lion created through the calligraphic weaving of sacred text from the Qu'ran. Sidi Ahmed Sheikh also had the power to heal mental illnesses, and he blessed the music of Jajouka with this same healing power. To this day, the Master Musicians, along with the holy man of the village, heal mental illnesses of the people sent from around Morocco.
Bachir Attar, leader of the Master Musicians of Jajouka.
Bachir Attar is the hereditary leader of the Master Musicians of Jajouka from a small village in Morocco. Bachir and the Master Musicians have been the subject of international radio and television programs and documentary films.
In 1980 the Master Musicians of Jajouka began a series of European tours, but lost momentum in 1982 with the death of their chief and group leader, Hadj Abdessalam Attar. One of his younger sons, Bachir Attar, has taken over as the legitimate hereditary leader of the Master Musicians, and Bachir works hard to preserve Jajouka’s traditions and secrets.
As a kind of ambassador of Jajouka music, Bachir Attar journeys from his mountain village home to Paris, London, New York and elsewhere, constantly working to get the music of Jajouka out to the world, and he composes new songs. Over the years, Bachir Attar has collaborated with other musicians, including Deborah Harry, saxophonist Ornette Coleman, Talvin Singh, Elliott Sharp, Bill Laswell, Maceo Parker, and Lee Ranaldo of Sonic Youth, and others.
In 1989 in Tangier, Bachir Attar and the Master Musicians of Jajouka also collaborated and recorded with Mick Jagger, Ron Wood and Keith Richards of The Rolling Stones on the song Continental Drift for the Stone's album Steel Wheels, an event well documented by Paul Bowles in his diary Days: A Tangier Journal. The summer 1989 recording was arranged by Cherie Nutting, who found the location at Palais Ben Abbou in Tangier's Kasbah, where the three-day recording session was held. Mick Jagger has described the Master Musicians of Jajouka featuring Bachir Attar as "one of the most musically inspiring groups still left on the planet."
The Beat generation writer William S. Burroughs, who based his Interzone in The Naked Lunch on Tangier, wrote about the Master Musicians of Jajouka: "Listen to the music, the primordial sounds. Listen with your whole body, let the music penetrate you and move you, and you will connect with the oldest music on earth." William Burroughs wrote his congratulations to Cherie Nutting, Jajouka's manager, in a signed letter dated November 30, 1994: “I am aware of all your good work with Bachir Attar, who is, without any doubt, the sole rightful inheritor of the mantle of Leader of the Master Musicians of Jajouka, and his band of musicians, who are the only rightful ‘Master Musicians.’”
Under Bachir Attar's very capable able leadership, the Master Musicians are preserving their ancient musical traditions and the Master Musicians of Jajouka are regularly asked to perform concerts throughout the world.
The Master Musicians of Jajouka led by Bachir Attar are honored to have been officially recognized by the government of the Kingdom of Morocco in a special proclamation. Bachir Attar lives in Jajouka, Morocco, several kilometers from the town of Ksar-el-Kebir. The Master Musicians of Jajouka made their first American tour in 1995, and subsequently held other successful tours in various Scandinavian and European countries, and in Canada and Hong Kong.
The Master Musicians of Jajouka and Bachir Attar have been featured on international television and radio programs including CNN, BBC, WGBH in Boston and PRI (Public Radio International). In Morocco, Bachir Attar and the Master Musicians of Jajouka have appeared at various times on RTM and 2M television, and they have also been heard on Radio Tanger and Medi1 radio stations. The Master Musicians of Jajouka led by Bachir Attar are now recording music CDs under the new record label Jajouka Records Inc. as of 2008.
The Master Musicians and Bachir Attar will also be performing in several new documentary films which are now in production and which will be available on DVD.
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Past Events
17
Feb
2009
20:00
Neumos
