Moroccan Music

I am not the guy who has written an article in this month's Wire magazine about Canadian experimental music going by the name of Tim Rutherford-Johnson because I don't have a Johnson at the end of my name. I'd be more likely to write an article about experimental music from Melbourne or Sydney anyway. I did notice there's also a piece on Moroccan trance music which has caught my attention, I may have to actually buy this issue. I'm assuming this article is not about the techno variety of trance, however I may be wrong.

I've been interested in Moroccan music ever since I discovered The Master Musician Of Jajouka in the early 90s. In the last few years after exhaustively listening to my half a dozen Jajouka/Joujouka recordings I've been tuned in to the great blog Moroccan Tape Stash. This blog is a treasure trove with music from pop to sacred trance music and everything else in-between. This scene is still hard to navigate though and can often be confusing. Some of the best tapes posted by Tim Abdellah (a lot of Tims today) on his blog are by unknown artists. I tried to get some youtube clips of the below tape but there's a language barrier. Anyway it makes being a fan of this music a bit more...I dunno...challenging. A bit like in the old days when you had to seek the arcane knowledge of the subterranean music scene, you know before the interwebs. To be honest half the time I don't know exactly what constitutes berber, Jilala or Bendir music. Fuck I like it though. Along with Gamelan music Moroccan music is where I go when current music's not doin it for me, which is 75% of the time.

Couldn't find this on Youtube...It's great though.

So this is the record that started it all for a lot of Moroccan music fans. Brian Jones arranged this recording of The Master Musicians Of Joujouka and this LP was issued in 1971 on Rolling Stone Records. All your favourite creepy hipster Morocco dwellers were involved with the liner notes of this album as well ie. William s Buroughs, Brion Gyson, Paul Bowles etc.