Master Musicians of Joujouka
Official website of the legendary Sufi brotherhood Master Musicians of Joujouka from Joujouka/Jajouka, Morocco.
Healing Crazy Minds: Master Musicians Of Joujouka & Morocco's Boujeloud Festival by Richie Troughton
Healing Crazy Minds: Master Musicians Of Joujouka & Morocco’s Boujeloud Festival. Richie Troughton reports in The Quietus on visiting Master Musicians of Joujouka for their festival June 4-6 2010
“A lone pipe line leads the group into action. The drummers pound out an incessant barrage of colliding patterns on their drums (with sheep hides for skins), rested on the knees and played with a spoon shaped piece of wood in one hand and a thin stick in the other. You can watch the musicians and try to work out who is playing what, but once you catch the eye of the man you’ve picked out they will instantly change the beat. The rhaita players carry on a follow-the-leader routine, constantly upping the ante, using circular breathing techniques to maintain the notes, until unified screeches ring out in ascension, building up and building up the intensity until the pitch is ringing out beyond the lavish tent that is their backdrop and high out into the hills. And oh yes, it is loud too.”
Click link for full article
Healing Crazy Minds: Master Musicians Of Joujouka & Morocco’s Boujeloud Festival by Richie Troughton
Liberation articles on Master Musicians of Joujouka Festival 2010
Two articles from France’s Liberation newspaper which appeared 7 June 2010. Both piece’s are by DAVID BORNSTEIN, Liberation’s special reporter on Morocco who visited the village and the Master Musicians of Joujouka to discover the music and culture of Joujouka/Jajouka for himself.
Joujouka, le club des soufis stones ? Par DAVID BORNSTEIN Joujouka, le club des soufis stonesWorld. Ce petit bled perdu dans le Rif marocain a abrité son troisième festival de musique soufie, qui s’est achevé hier. Entre transe panique, kif et mythologie hippie.
Read More Joujouka, le club des soufis stones ?
Rif et rock’n’roll ? Par DAVID BORNSTEIN Envoyé spécial au Maroc
??Découvert dans les années 50, Joujouka voit par la suite défiler les plus grands noms.
Le peintre Brion Gysin, les écrivains William Burroughs et Paul Bowles rencontrent les musiciens de Joujouka dès les années 50 alors qu’ils vivent à Tanger. C’est Mohamed Hamri, l’un des plus célèbres peintres marocains, qui leur fait découvrir son village natal.
Dans les années 70, les hippies défilent. Brian Jones, premier guitariste des Rolling Stones, est aussi le premier à tripper à Joujouka. Dès 1968, il débarque dans le Rif avec son ingénieur du son. Mélangeant les cassettes, ajoutant des effets sonores de répétition et d’échos – une nouveauté à l’époque -, il produira l’album Pipes of Pan at Joujouka. Mystique, Jones aurait vécu cette musique comme une «incantation à des êtres venus d’ailleurs». Il meurt tragiquement en 1969 et, désormais, ce sont les soufis qui lui rendent hommage. Pour lui, ils ont même créé une chanson en anglais. Les paroles sont brèves, mais efficaces : «Ha ! Brian Jones, very stone !» («Ah, Brian Jones, qu’est-ce qu’il était défoncé !»).?? ?
Read More
http://www.liberation.fr/culture/0101639893-rif-et-rock-n-roll ?
Master Musicians of Joujouka Youtube channel
Watch Master Musicians of Joujouka videos on our Youtube channel
Master Musicians of Joujouka Youtube channel
Master Musicians of Joujouka featured Antibothis book anthology and CD compilation out now
The first release by Master Musicians of Joujouka recorded at the Master Musicians of Joujouka Brian Jones 40th Anniversary Festival 29 July 2008 on CD is out now from Antibothis the book features an article by Frank Rynne on working with Mohamed Hamri and the Master Musicians of Joujouka from 1992 and the Brian Jones 4th Anniversary Festival in Joujouka 29-30 July 2008. The Cd features one track by the Master Musicians as well as tracks by Lydia Lunch with Philippe Petit, Checkpoint 303, Kal Cahoone, Gintas K, Orbit Service, Anla Courtis, Stpo, Jabe Radion Newton and Adi Newton / T.A.G.C., Zeitkratzer, Pietro Riparbelli/K11, Gjoll.
See Master Musicians of Joujouka festival blog for links and more info
The Wire Magazine free video download of Master Musicians of Joujouka
View an exclusive preview of Brian Jones Joujouka Very Stoned by Daragh McCarthy featuring a live performance by The Master Musicians Of Joujouka at the Brian Jones 40th Anniversary Festival 2008 in Joujouka/Jajouka Morocco.
Brian Jones Joujouka very Stoned video download The Wire
The Wire Magazine free download of Master Musicians of Joujouka MP3
The Wire magazine October 2009 feature “Jajouka” in the Global Ear section by Lise Blanning who attended the Master Musicians of Joujouka Festival, June 5-7, 2009. Lise stayed with leader of the Master Musicia ns of Joujouka, Ahmed Attar,and obviously enjoyed her stay in the village and the music and people she encountered there .
The Master Musicians are proud for the offer to allow a free download and music stream on The Wire magazine website which will be permanently available on
Master Musicians of Joujouka free download from The Wire
Sound Unbound DJ Spooky remixes of Master Musicians of Joujouka with both Marcel Duchamp and Hans Arp
In his seminal remix Cd based on the archives of the Sub Rosa label, the label home of the Master Musicians of Joujouka since 1995, DJ Spooky, That Subliminal Kid aka Paul D. Miller melded the Master Musicians of Joujouka drumming from their 2006 Bouljeloud CD with archival recording by Marcel Duchamp on the track Marcel Duchamp/The Master Musicians of Joujouka/RadioMentale, “The Creative Act/Interview with George Heard Hamilton/Boujeloud (Solo Drums)/I Could Never Make That Music Again”
A further track with the Dada artist Jean Arp aka Hans Arp. The Master Musicians of Joujouka/Hans Arp, “Mali Mal Hal M’Halmaz/Boujeloud (Solo Drums)/Dada-Sprüche” features two tracks from the Boujeloud CD (Sub Rosa, 2006).
The Cd accompanies the book of the same name published by M.I.T. Press in 2008
The Guardian's Mark Paytress on Master Musicians of Joujouka Brian Jones 40th Anniversary Festival
Mark Paytress on Brian Jones 40th Aniversary Festival and preview for Master Musicians of Joujuka Festival 5/6 June, 2009.
“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……….”
Take me into insanity, Mark Paytress, The Guardian, Friday 29 May 2009
You Should be Trancin' by Mark Paytress, from Mojo October 2008.
You Should be Trancin’ by Mark Paytress, from Mojo October 2008.
Mark Paytress attended the Brian jones 40th Anniversary Festival in July 2008 at Joujouka. Among the guests were Anita Pallenberg and JOhn Dunbar.
You Should be Trancin, by Mark Paytress, Mojo Oct. 2008
Eddie Woods Back In No Time with Brion Gysin
“I’m not here to put anyone down. I’d just like to make a few suggestions.” Ira Cohen
Dear Eddie,
I first heard the Master Musicians of Jajouka in 1950. It was at a festival outside of Tangier on the beach, a small harbor that went back to Phoenician times… I was there with Paul Bowles. Paul, of course, was an established composer before making his name as a writer and also an archivist of North African music. Anyway, it was Paul’s idea that I go to Morocco, he had bought a little house there and all. And I heard some music at that festival and was so taken by it, so enchanted, that I said to Paul, “I want to hear that music every day for the rest of my life. I want to hear it every day all day long.”
For sure, there were many other kinds of extraordinary music offered to one, mostly of the Ecstatic Brotherhoods who enter into trance, such as Jilala. But above all of that I had heard this funny little music, and I said, “Ah! That’s my music! I must find out where it comes from.” So I stayed and within a year I found that it came from Jajouka, a village in the Rif mountains where on several occasions during the year, whenever a festival comes round, the entire population of the Ahl Serif valley pours across the fields and wends its way, in procession, up the mountainside.
I mean, there would always be (and still is) a small group of the Masters traveling somewhere in the valley to animate a wedding or to honor some visiting dignitary. And my restaurant, The 1001 Nights, came about entirely because of them, it was their idea, as a way for me to stay in Morocco, hear their music all the time and earn my living. They said, “Why don’t you open a café or something in Tangier? Then we’ll come down, make the music and we can split the money.” Which is how it worked until 1956, when Moroccan independence wiped me out practically overnight… But I knew the Musicians for nearly 35 years, right up till the end, many of them in intimate daily contact.
Now in Jajouka when they play, and those things go on for seven days and nights, blue kif smoke rises and drops in veils and the air is flooded with this marvelous music, very magical, tirelessly executed by the Master Musicians, more than twenty strong. Each night they play 10-hour nonstop sessions as a cloud of dancing boys shimmers and sashays around a huge bonfire. The crowd whoops and hollers approval, while the women, all of them dressed in white, are heaped up on a hillside, their heads thrown back and mouths open, ululating to the heavens.
At some point a sense of urgency enters the music: the drums thunder and the shrill, almost bagpipe-sounding blare of the rhaitas (a double reed oboe-like instrument, similar to the Indian shanai) becomes like sheet lightning in the minds of the spectators. Higher and higher goes the music, heralding the appearance of a young man dressed in goat skins with a huge straw hat tied around his blackened face and carrying long sycamore branches. Chosen for the task since childhood, he is suddenly transformed, a young villager no longer. Bou Jeloud is there, the Great God Pan.
Oh, there are many confirmed stories of the Musicians on tour, even in Europe, picking off (as it were) unsuspecting members of the audience and—using only their horns, their Pipes of Pan—making these people dance, literally forcing them to, controlling them. But when Bou Jeloud dances alone in Jajouka, his Musicians blow a sound like the earth sloughing off its skin. When you shiver like someone just walked on your grave, that’s him; that’s Bou Jeloud, the Father of Fear, the Father of Skins, Pan…
If you want to disappear, come round for private lessons. Remember? OK, you’ve just had yours. Back in no time.
Love, Brion
This particular presentation of Jajouka music is from a live performance in France and comes in cassette form. Published by Staaltape (Amsterdam), it is in some ways well done and in other respects a most unprofessional job. The nicely-printed cassette cover gives no information at all about the Musicians, the performance…nada. The cassette itself is unlabeled and has its tabs intact; not only does it look like a blank cassette, it can easily be recorded over by accident. Ditto for the accompanying cassette, an interesting but incomplete 40-odd minute interview with Brion that also tells nothing of Jajouka (there is a brief ‘reference in passing,’ bas) and which is recorded on only one side, the other side being (in)conveniently empty. Ah, and no times are given for the music tape, although my stopwatch assures me it’s 54 minutes. Both cassettes (+ plastic covers, thank goodness) come in a plain wooden box with a slide-off top, along with a well made hardbound book, Back In No Time: Some aspects of Brion Gysin and suggestions for use, by A.M. McKenzie. The title phrase is from a small sign Brion used to hang on the outside of his door whenever he left the house, whether for five minutes or five weeks. The whole shebang (this is a limited edition of 500 copies, by the way) was selling for the equivalent of ca. €18.00 when first released in 1989.
Brion Gysin, who died on July 13th 1986, discovered the cut-up method of writing. Indeed, he introduced William Burroughs to the technique. The above letter (from Brion) was received by this reviewer on May 8th 1989. Back in no time. Get it?
(Office) Staalplaat, P.O. Box 11453, 1001 GL Amsterdam, The Netherlands
(Shop) Staalplaat, Flughafenstrasse 38, D-12053, Berlin, Germany
(Tel.) +49 30 2005 4697
(Website) http://www.staalplaat.com/
front left to right Miles, Frank Rynne, Eddie Woods reading “The Death of 9 Rue Gît-le-Coeur” from Beat Hotel by Harold Norse at the William S. Burroughs Naked Lunch @50 celebrations outside the Beat Hotel, 9 Rue Gît-le-Coeur , Paris, July 1 2009.Text and Brion Gysin letter © Eddie Woods
Music © Master Musicians of Joujouka
The above review and letter were published at the time the staalplaat 2 cassette set was published in 1989. the 2 cassette limited edition of 500 was presented in a wooden box. special thanks to our friends Eddie Woods and Andrew McKenzie.
Master Musicians of Joujouka live in Paris 1980 download