Another Concert Review: The Road to Jajouka featuring the Master Musicians of Jajouka w/Bachir Attar, Billy Martin, Marc Ribot, Shahzad Ismaily, DJ Logic, and opening set by Eliot Sharp and Bachir Attar

Date: June 15, 2015
Venue: Le Poisson Rouge (NY)

Review and photos by Keith Brooks and Ann Fawcett Ambia

Thanks to a couple of free tix from Sohrab Saadat Ladjevardi, my friend Ann and I got to see the Road to Jajouka performance at Le Poisson Rouge on June 15th. For those, like us, who were not familiar with the Master Musicians of Jajouka, (although Ann and I caught a brief glimpse of their music when they appeared at the Ornette Coleman tribute at Prospect Park a few nights before) perhaps the first question to be addressed is : who are they, and why have so many diverse musicians sought them out to play and record with going back to 1971?

The Poisson Rouge web site puts it succinctly :
“The Rif mountains of Morocco hosts a small collection of tribal musicians dubbed the Master Musicians of Jajouka by western artists, but despite their obscurity this small group has influenced popular musicians from the Rolling stones to Ornette Coleman. The Sufi trance music they perform stretches from more than 1,000 year tradition…”
And keeping that tradition alive and healthy was the motor force behind the concert, as well as a benefit CD that will be coming out in September that will feature all the musicians who played at Poisson, plus Ornette Coleman, Bill Laswell, and a number of others who donated their time. Proceeds from the CD will go towards preserving the culture and community that the Jajouka musicians have created over the years.

As for the music : Eliot Sharp and Bachir Attar opened the night with a 40 minute interplay between Sharp’s mainly atonal guitar explorations (demonstrating perhaps his application of “fractal geometry, chaos theory and genetics to musical composition and interaction”) with the piercing sounds of the oboe-like instrument the ghaita (also known as the rhaita) played by Attar and an unidentified Jajouka musician. Ann, who has been to Morocco, had this to say about the ghaita: “Imagine you were in the mountains and you need to have a sound that would carry long distances, to let people people know when to gather together. “

It was the second set’s larger ensemble tho’ that clearly demonstrated how seamlessly the sounds of Jajouka blends with other musical forms. Attar and the other Jajouka musician played a range of instruments indigenous to the region– the lira, an ancient Berber bamboo flute, the tebel and bendir drums, as well as the rhaita among others, all woven together with the hard driving drumming and accenting percussion of Billy Martin, the propulsive guitar of Marc Ribot, strong bass lines of Shahzad Ismaily and the innovative DJ Logic’s turntable work. Hypnotic sounds, heavy beats and steady grooves had a number of people out of their seats and dancing; at one point the rhaita took on the sound of Irish pipes, married to Irish rhythms. World music for sure. And on that note, it would have been helpful if Attar or one of the musicians would have done a little music education, identifying and perhaps giving some background to the various instruments they played.

Luckily, what we heard that night seems to be available on that CD which was released in September 2013, entitled…The Road to Jajouka compilation (2013 Howe Records CD), and hopefully there will be an official accompanying tour soon. If they hit town again, be sure not to miss them !