Inside the Oldest, Most Exclusive Dance Party in the World
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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: 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-pitchedghaitahorns 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 annualMaster 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 devoteesand 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 (ormalikimin 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 toJoukouka.
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 asthe 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 saxophonistOrnette Colemanarrived 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 emergedwho 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 villageandtheir 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


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