Today the Western Sahara is a hip place for music, with groups like Tinariwen, Group Doueh, or Amassakoul. The Festival Du Desert is held in Essakane, Mali and musicians like Robert Plant and Damon Albarn have made the pilgrimage, both to perform and also to experience the music of the local groups. No, I haven't been there, though it probably would be a great thing to do. Of course the music on Apocalypse and the Desert Blues Music are quite different. But when Apocalypse was released, there wasn't much out there for me to choose from. The Brian Jones album had been out of print for years, and Ornette Coleman's Dancing in My Head had some bits at the end where he was performing with The Master Musicians, but most of the tapes were destroyed or lost.
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| Original Man Cave was a cave |
Honestly, I didn't know what to make of this at first. For me, the music was right off the deep end, into a whole different musical world. It seemed kind of cacophonous, at times celebratory, ritualistic with stuttery rhythms, blaring horns. And the music seems old. I wonder whether people were playing these same songs on ancient instruments two thousand years ago. And though they are professional musicians sanctioned by the Kingdom of Morocco, there is a real wildness to the music. The music is both related to Sufism and also to the God Pan. The liner notes hint at a confluence here between magic and religion. I'm not sure when psychedelia was invented, but it certainly wasn't in the 60's. Probably altering consciousness is as old a tradition as any in humankind. This music definitely does something to my head--creating a trancelike feeling of well being. And I can also see the connections to free jazz. For some reason I am reminded of Albert Ayler and marching bands. Then again, I can see how this might not be enjoyable to some people.
As I said before, I was having trouble getting this music at first, but eventually I came to appreciate it on its own terms, rather than simply comparing to my past musical experiences. And this album became pretty special to me, one that I always come back to. I love the instruments that the group uses: The lira, which is an ancient flute which sounds a lot like the Armenian Duduk. The Ghaita, which is a double reeded woodwind, which has a very unique wild sound. The Gimbri, a three-stringed lute and the Tarija and Bendir, which are drums. Percussion is a huge part of the music, and there are many drum players here, forming a continuous backdrop to the horn riffing.
It seems odd that the men are mostly featured on the Cd's liner notes, but there is women's group here also, which is mostly chanting over percussion, like on the song Alalilla (About The Night). I'm not certain how things work in Morocco, but it looks like they are not performing together with the men. This group is from the area south of the Rif Mountains in Northern Morocco and I am struck by the photo on the back of the Cd of the Master Musicians performing in the mouth of a cave. And when I hear this music I can only imagine that it is imbued in the life of the people of the area, something inseparable from life, in a way so different from the commodified commercialized lifestyle accessory that music is to the average person like me.
Credit to Bill Laswell for producing this album. I assumed that there would be more recordings after this, but there really have been few released that I know of. I definitely recommend this album highly, and I think that anyone who has a craving to hear great music from any source will really enjoy this one. Some would consider this to be exotica, but I just think the musicianship is excellent. Give the music a chance, and I think you will agree.
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