The Legend

The remarkable music played by the Master Musicians of Joujouka, a remote village in the Ahl Srif tribal area south of the Rif in Northern Morocco, is thousands of years old.

In the 15th century, when the Sufi saint Sidi Ahmed Schiech arrived in the village, he wrote music for the Masters’ ancestors which could heal disturbed minds. Today’s Masters are blessed with the Baraka or spirit of their saint and use touch and prayer to heal.

Bou Jeloud

The Masters’ performances feature a dancer dressed as Bou Jeloud, a Pan-like figure half goat half man. Although the character of Bou Jeloud is found all over Morocco, it takes on different form in Joujouka.

In Joujouka, Bou Jeloud gave an Attar ancestor the gift of flute music and bestowed fertility on the village every spring when he danced. The music relating to this is the Masters at their most mind-blowingly powerful.

The Masters, Beats and Hippies

In 1951, the American writer Paul Bowles and the Canadian painter Brion Gysin travelled to a Sufi music festival in Sidi Kacem, a couple of hours from where they were living in Tangier.

When he heard the Masters, Gysin said he wanted to listen to their music every day of his life. In Tangier, he met Mohamed Hamri, a would-be painter from Joujouka. When Hamri took Gysin to Joujouka, Gysin discovered to his astonishment that the music he’d fallen in love with was played by Hamri’s uncles.

Gysin and Hamri opened a restaurant in Tangier called The 1001 Nights and members of the Masters became the house band. It was here that legendary Beat figure William Burroughs first heard the music.

In the late 1950s Gysin and Burroughs lived in the Beat Hotel at 9 rue Git le Couer, Paris. Here Gysin invented the Cut-Up Method of writing and theDreamachine with Ian Somerville and worked with Burroughs, Somerville and filmmaker Antony Balch in Cut Up film experiments to a soundtrack of the Masters Musicians made by Gysin.

When the Rolling Stones were in Tangier in 1967, Hamri and Gysin met them and Hamri formed a bond with Brian Jones. Brian went to Joujouka, where he, too, fell in love with the Masters’ music, although he said ‘I don’t know if I possess the stamina to endure the incredible, constant strain of the festival’. He returned in 1968 to record the Masters.

Before he died in 1969, Brian had prepared the cover, and edited and produced the album of recordings he made of the Masters. Brian Jones Presents the Pipes of Pan at Joujouka was released in 1971, honouring Brian’s memory and exposing a wider audience to the remarkable music of the Masters for the first time.

In January 1973, jazz musician Ornette Coleman recorded with the Masters. A small part of what was recorded was released on the 1975 album Dancing In My Head album. Also in 1975, Hamri’s book Tales of Joujouka was published.

Thanks to Rikki Stein, the Masters played at Worthy Farm, the site of Glastonbury, for the first time in 1980 as part of a three-month tour which included a week’s residency at London’s Commonwealth Institute.

To 2008

After many years painting in LA, Hamri returned to Joujouka and found discord in the village. He built a new house there which became a gathering place for many of the old Masters and their apprentices. He took a large group to Italy in 1991 and in 1992 both he and the Masters took part in the Here to Go Show in Dublin, documented in the DVDDestroy all rational Thought.

In Dublin, the Masters met Frank Rynne, their current manager. Frank spent two months with Hamri in Joujouka in 1994 recording the classic CD Joujouka Black Eyes for Sub Rosa. Since then, he’s recorded Sufi: Moroccan Trance and Boujeloud. In 1998 Hamri and Masters’ drummer El Khalil Radi took part in the Festimad Poetica festival in Madrid with Lydia Lunch, Richard Hell, John Giorno, Tav Falco and John Cale. The Masters were also featured on the CD 10% File Under Burroughs, released 1998. In 2012 they appeared on the latest Rough Guide to the Music of Morocco.

The 40th Anniversary of Pipes of Pan

In 2008 the Masters honoured the 40th Anniversary of Brian Jones’s influential recording with a festival at Joujouka. Anita Pallenberg and John Dunbar were among the people who made the pilgrimage to the village. Joujouka by Daragh McCarthy, a film of the 2008 Brian Jones Festival premiered in London in 2012 and will be released in 2013.

Since then the festival has become an annual event, attracting artists, filmmakers, musicians, writers and fans from around the world. As well as generating valuable global publicity for the music, the festival has become an important economic factor in Joujouka life

2011 saw the Masters on the Pyramid stage at Glastonbury, opening the Festival.

The Festival

More about the Festival

Since 2008, the annual festival at Joujouka has taken place in June every summer and offers a unique opportunity to spend three days with the Master Musicians. Unlike any other, ours is a true micro-festival which has received rave coverage from Mojo, The Guardian, Liberation, the BBC, Al Jazeera and The Irish Times.

Our concept

The Festival is all about offering a very small group of people the opportunity to live in Joujouka with the Masters as your hosts and experience the music in the village and spectacular landscape in which it belongs. People who speak French, Arabic and English and who have long, strong connections with the village are on hand to answer questions and make you feel as at home as possible. Because of the nature of the Festival, numbers have to be strictly limited to 50 people and this means it’s essential to book early if you want to have this incredible experience.

Flying to Morocco

If you’re only coming to Morocco for the Festival, the easiest thing to do is to fly to Tanger and take the train from Tanger Ville, a short taxi ride from the centre of Tanger. A taxi from Tanger to Joujouka costs 100 MAD. Should you be travelling in Morocco, Fez and Casablanca are four hours from El Ksar El Kebir, the nearest town to Joujouka, by train. Marrakesh is eight hours. Don’t fly to Agadir – there are no direct train connections.

Getting to Joujouka

We collect you at El Ksar El Kebir train station and return you when the festival is over. The station is around an hour from Joujouka. The Moroccan train service is actually pretty good and very cheap. You can find train times at www.oncf.ma, the website of the national rail network.

How long is the festival?

Due to high demand, we only offer three-day tickets for the full festival but if you really want to experience Joujouka and can only come for a shorter period of time, contact us and we’ll see what we can do.

What the ticket price includes

The Masters play for you and the village every night of the Festival on the stage which was purpose built for them and they spend most of the days playing. Music is part of the fabric of Joujouka and the essence of your experience. Your ticket includes transport from the railway station, three nights’ accommodation in the Masters’ homes, all your meals and drinks for the three days of the festival and breakfast on the day you leave. Alcohol is strictly prohibited. All accommodation arrangements will be made for you well before you arrive in Joujouka and, don’t worry, you won’t be sharing a room with strangers. One of the great treats of the Festival is the opportunity to enjoy home cooked Moroccan food, which is delicious. If you’re a vegetarian or vegan, no problem. Your hosts will often prepare snacks, which are meals in themselves.

Reserve your place for 2018

The full cost for the Festival is €385. You pay a non-refundable €85 deposit with the balance payable before the Festival. Dates for 2016 22-4 June with drop off on Monday 25 July.
Info email joujouka@gmail.com

Note that ticket purchase does not grant any image or sound rights of the Master Musicians of Joujouka or the villagers, guests or the village. The Master Musicians of Joujouka retain all rights in their patrimony, image, music and culture.

Major UK feature on Master Musicians of Joujouka festival by Paul Trynka

Former editor of Mojo and Q and definitive biographer of Bowie, Iggy Pop and now, Brian Jones, Paul Trynka on the Master Musicians of Joujouka today:

“From the first beat the music is arresting, melodies carried by seven or eight rhaita, oboe-like pipes – the pipes of Pan – flanked by five or six drummers playing tbel, primitive military-style drums. Pipers play a call and response; over the next five or six hours, then three successive nights, I hear hundreds of melodies, some surely blues or folk, some impossibly alien, while the drums boom out relentlessly hypnotic polyrhythms. The volume is overwhelming – your ears ring, your brain shakes, your teeth rattle. I’ve lost all consciousness of time, when suddenly a new energy fills the air – a goat-skinned apparition leaps on stage and the pipes distort into a rush of noise, like a Jimi Hendrix guitar solo. Bou Jeloud dances across the tent, shaking his hips in front of the musicians, who sweat with the intensity of their work.”

Read the full article here:

Morocco: Follow the sound of the Beats by Paul Trynka

Booking now Master Musicians of Joujouka Festival 2015 see the festival section of this site.
For info email Frank joujouka@gmail.com

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