Saturday, October 17, 2009

Monday, October 12, 2009

Destroy All Rational Thought documentary in Polish Film Festival

The documentary Destroy All Rational Thought which is a film about the Here To Go Show , Dublin in 1992 is being shown from next weekend at

BWA Wrocław - Galerie Sztuki Współczesnej
ul. Wita Stwosza 32
PL 50-149 Wrocław
tel. 071/790-25-82
e-mail: info@bwa.wroc.pl

The film features the Master Musicians of Joujouka in performance at the first art show to feature the paintings of Brion Gysin and William S. Burroughs. The documnetary also feature music by Bill laswell, Material and includes a special tribute to Brion Gysin by William Burroughs, film by Antony Balch and Phauss and more................
http://www.magia.gildia.pl/news/2009/10/interzone_pokazy_filmow
http://www.bwa.wroc.pl/index.php?l=pl&id=345&b=4&w=1

Wednesday, October 7, 2009

The Guardian report on the Brian Jones 40th Anniversary Festival in Joujouka. Join the Master Musicians in 2010. Festival 4/5 June Booking opening

Join the Master Musicians of Joujouka in thier home village for 2 days of music. Stay in the homes of the Sufi masters and enjoy the pure trance of Joujouka.
For the third year in a row the Master Musicians of Joujouka are holding a summer festival to allow people the chance to come and see for themselves what life and culture is like in their famous village.

Enjoy informal and formal sessions under a starry sky in Morocco's Ahl Srif Mountains.
Witness Boujeloud dance in the flames. Hear the wild sounds of rhiata and the hypnotic drums with the people and musicians of Joujouka. all food is sourced locally and cooked by the people of the village. All proceeds go directly to the Master Musicians of Joujouka and all supplies are sourced in the community.
Tickets on sale here soon.

For advance booking
email joujouka@gmail.com
As with the Master Musicians website www.joujouka.net CD and book sales the master Musicians of Joujouka Festival is an ethical event organised by the Master Musicians of Joujouka.



Take me into insanity

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


* Mark Paytress
* The Guardian, Friday 29 May 2009
* Article history

Joujouka, a village nestled in the foothills of the Rif mountains in northern Morocco, has been attracting enlightenment-chasing subversives and sonic novelty-seekers for decades. They are drawn by its Sufi trance music, played by the Master Musicians of Joujouka on a pipe called the rhaita and a drum called the tebel. In the 50s, Paul Bowles and William Burroughs visited, and the latter concluded: "We need more diabolic music everywhere." Timothy Leary proclaimed the Master Musicians to be "a 4,000-year-old rock'n'roll band". And in July 1968, Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones dropped in to record the village's Boujeloud - or Rites of Pan - festival.

That gruellingly intense annual night of music, magic and fertility still takes place every year, though the village has changed since Jones's visit: it now has electricity and a mobile phone mast that dwarfs the minaret of the mosque. Much, however, remains medieval: there is no running water, and the climate and landscape still dictate how life is lived.

When Jones's recordings were released posthumously in 1971, as The Pipes of Pan at Joujouka, the village gained a new level of fame - the guitarist was followed by more musicians, including Ornette Coleman - and Jones himself gained a new status in the village as a near-saint. Last July, I was among 40 or so westerners who went to Joujouka to mark the 40th anniversary of his visit. I often heard the Master Musicians chanting "Ah, Brahim Jones, really stones" as they worked through a rhythm.

The idea to commemorate Jones's trip came from Frank Rynne, a frequent visitor to Joujouka since he stumbled on its music at a Burroughs-related event in Dublin in 1992. "Brian Jones is so revered here that I felt the anniversary of his visit should be marked," Rynne says.

However, the festival long predates Jones. Its origins lie in the legend of the goat-man Boujeloud bestowing the gift of music on the village in return for the hand of one of its women. Every year, the festival pays homage to Boujeloud in order to guarantee the village healthy crops and purposeful procreation. Much has been made of the magic and transcendence associated with this ancient fertility rite, but its real purpose is to heal. "Yes, the music makes people go into a trance," Master Musician Mohamed el Attar tells me, "but it also heals souls. Psychopaths get better when they hear it. That is the secret of this place."

As the ceremony begins, I follow the nine magnificently attired Masters - resplendent in yellow hats, white collarless shirts and dark, one-shoulder robes - as they make their way down a long, dusty track to a gently lit corner of the village square, where some 120 villagers and visitors are gathered. Without realising it, I perch upon the same rock Jones sat on 40 years ago, as the Masters hit their transcendent stride.

A group of watching youths, some dressed in baseball caps and logo-emblazoned T-shirts, bounce boisterously in front of the bonfire. Women huddle in the shadows. When the rhaitas, sounding something like a herd of aroused elephants, nudge up a semitone, the tingle factor really kicks in. A trick long favoured by a generation of superstar DJs is, it seems, as old as time itself.

Then out hops the sprite-like Boujeloud. Hours ago, he was the soberly attired master of the house where I slept. Now, this apparition in a straw hat and goat-skin is mad-eyed and rubber-necked; he thrashes me with a pair of olive branches. My fertility apparently secured, at least for another year, I leap to my feet and join in this primal scream of a party. For five long hours, these rhythms and rituals play out against a backdrop of spitting bonfires, screams and the endless high-jinks of Boujeloud. At about five in the morning, it winds down. "Boujeloud" is back in his bum-freezer jacket and handing out cups of mint tea to the small handful of us who have survived this exhilarating, extraordinary but exhausting musical endurance test.

When Brian Jones returned to London in August 1968, he spent hours in the studio doctoring his tapes with psychedelic effects (mainly phasing), in an attempt to accentuate the far-outness of an experience he likened to "an incantation to those of another plane". Many later sonic adventurers, working in jazz or rock or experimental music, have drawn inspiration from the music of Joujouka. Even the Stones milked what Mick Jagger admitted was "a tenuous musical connection" by using the Master Musicians on their 1989 Steel Wheels album.

Since that time, artists from the village have travelled to the west - drawn as much by the financial as the spiritual rewards - to perform music from Joujouka and the surrounding region. As we drive off at dawn the following morning, the first of the day's five calls to prayer ringing in our ears, I wonder whether I have just witnessed a long, loud, final blast of a tradition that's now staring extinction in the face. But Rynne is more optimistic. He says the event has brought enough money and supplies to the village to keep the place thriving until the winter - and that's before the cash from a planned CD/DVD release rolls in.

"You saw the young men last night," he smiles, referring to the mass outbreak of Boujeloud-inspired mayhem. "It's impossible to my mind that those boys, growing up in the houses of musicians, won't one day be picking up drums themselves."

Maybe so. But whether they'll stay put in Joujouka rather than try their luck on the international stage is, of course, another matter.


Monday, October 5, 2009

Master Musicians of Joujouka Festival 2010, Joujouka/Jajouka, Morocco, Dates Announced 4/5 June 2010


Brian Jones 40th Anniversary Joiner Image by Jill Furmanovsky/Rock Archives

The 3rd annual Master Musicians of Joujouka Festival will take place Friday 4 and Saturday 5 June, 2010. Spend a weekend of music, food and Sufi hospitality in the village and stay in the homes of the Master Musician of Joujouka. Breakfast, lunch and dinner provided. Arrive Friday noon and depart Sunday afternoon/evening. Impromptu and formal music performances in the natural setting with the Masters and people of Joujouka/Jajouka.

Started in 2008 with the Master Musicians of Joujouka Brian Jones 40th Anniversary Festival on July 29 and 3O. The festival moved to June in 2009 as the dates in July coincide with the Fete de Throne of King Mohamed VI which the Master Musicians attend and perform at every year. The June date also ensures a more temperate climate in Joujouka/Jajouka rather than the typical 38 C at the end of July.

The dates allow for visitors to Morocco to also attend events at the Festival of Sacred Music in Fes.


Booking will be available here soon but anyone who wants to reserve a place should email joujouka@gmail.com

Short clip from the Brian Jones 40th Anniversary Festival from a film currently in production below.



Visitors will stay in the homes of The Master Musicians of Joujouka in their home village and enjoy a weekend of life in the Sufi village in the Ahl Srif Mountains near Ksar El Kebir, Morocco.

Info and advance bookings contact joujouka@gmail.com

See The October 2009 issue of The Wire for Lise Blanning's report on the 2009 Festival.
Download 10min MP3 in exclusive with The Wire http://www.thewire.co.uk/articles/3035/

Mark Paytress reported on the Brian Jones 40th Anniversary Festival in The Guardian and Mojo see
Guardian

Take me into insanity

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

.........


As the ceremony begins, I follow the nine magnificently attired Masters - resplendent in yellow hats, white collarless shirts and dark, one-shoulder robes - as they make their way down a long, dusty track to a gently lit corner of the village square, where some 120 villagers and visitors are gathered. Without realising it, I perch upon the same rock Jones sat on 40 years ago, as the Masters hit their transcendent stride.

A group of watching youths, some dressed in baseball caps and logo-emblazoned T-shirts, bounce boisterously in front of the bonfire. Women huddle in the shadows. When the rhaitas, sounding something like a herd of aroused elephants, nudge up a semitone, the tingle factor really kicks in. A trick long favoured by a generation of superstar DJs is, it seems, as old as time itself.

Then out hops the sprite-like Boujeloud. Hours ago, he was the soberly attired master of the house where I slept. Now, this apparition in a straw hat and goat-skin is mad-eyed and rubber-necked; he thrashes me with a pair of olive branches. My fertility apparently secured, at least for another year, I leap to my feet and join in this primal scream of a party. For five long hours, these rhythms and rituals play out against a backdrop of spitting bonfires, screams and the endless high-jinks of Boujeloud. At about five in the morning, it winds down. "Boujeloud" is back in his bum-freezer jacket and handing out cups of mint tea to the small handful of us who have survived this exhilarating, extraordinary but exhausting musical endurance test..........

Read More http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009/may/29/master-musicians-joujouka-festival-morocco


Mojo October 2008 PDF http://media.mind2hands.com/insom/MJMM01.pdf

Further Info advance booking email joujouka@gmail.com