In the Sahara

In front of me, and swirling around me, were some of the most exotic sights and enticing smells I’d ever experienced. Every smell and taste built on the last to create an intoxicating sense of adventure and travel. Not always easy or fun, but magical most times. Even ordinary, mundane moments and details of a communal meal with a group of Moroccans in a Berber tent in the Sahara was part of the story I could tell later. Mostly because it wasn’t ordinary at all for us.
The way most Moroccan meals are served is in a communal style. The tagine is used often- a clay pot that can be covered and put on fire or baked. Couscous dishes were common, with lamb or chicken and different kinds of vegetables. The prepared dishes would be placed on a shallow table and people sat cross legged, eating with their hands or scooping up food with delicious, barely sweet Moroccan bread.
Our friend we had picked up from the town before was eating freely we saw, obviously he was going to enjoy the fruits of his help to us. Or maybe this was the bonus to guiding unsuspecting westerners to his friends. We didn’t know, but you couldn‘t worry too much about it anyway. Also sharing the sprawling tent with us was a guy from France, a seasoned traveler and photographer. He had his Land Rover parked outside the tent, and the next day he was going to start the 3 or 4 day cross-desert drive to Mali. He showed us pictures from his previous trips there. They were shots of everyday life in yet another place I knew nothing about. We all shared in the food and tried to learn about each other and where each was from, commenting on similarities and differences.

Not long after the food was finished, the young gentlemen of the tent brought out a crude dumbek drum. They asked us what kind of music we liked. I thought of how to tell them of the music back home. Who would they know? What would be familiar to them? Even though I had heard Kenny Rogers on the ferry over and in the Marrakesh market, that wouldn’t do, so I couldn’t really answer them. The young man who had done most of the cooking started beating out a rythm on the drum, and got more and more into it as his self consciousness faded away. Before too long, the two other men joined in a chorus of “Mustafa, Mustafa!” as they swayed in enjoyment and flashed us soulful smiles.
The beat was familiar but the emphasis of the downbeat was shifted slightly enough to throw my ear. The emphasis seemed to come right after the downbeat, as opposed to western music, where if it’s syncopated, we throw this emphasis right before the downbeat. It’s deceptive simplicity let it cycle and never get stale. The guys were having fun singing this tune, which they explained later was a devotional song to the prophet Mustafa. It had significance to them spiritually and it was a song they liked. They handed me the drum and wanted me to play something, and I beat out some rythms that they got a kick out of. But I quickly handed it back to them; their music seemed to fit the atmosphere and setting much better.

They were beating out the pace of daily life as they heard it, the songs and feelings that they carried with them. And just like the customs and things I saw there, they had a humanistic familiarity to them. But they were so foreign at the same time, because they weren’t my habits, they weren’t my customs. Just like music: everyone, no matter where they’re from, can hear and feel the rythms, but only a few know the dances connected to the sounds and the true meaning of the words being sung.

Fna Fiddle

I remember walking past the food stalls, with everything from hearty couscous to desserts to lamb heads displayed, smoke rising above them, the smell making me hungry and curious. The snake charmers lined up and tempting a wayward traveler with a reading. We saw locals sitting in front of story tellers, enchanted by the tales. And men with monkeys and cameras roaming around goading some into unnecessary pictures. Groups of musicians were playing sounds that enchanted with their strange pulsing rythyms and exotic sounds.
We were in the Djema El Fna market in Marrakesh. The groups of musicians were the calm in the eye of the storm, the controlled chaos that was this market. A man was playing a western style violin that only had three strings that he held facing down resting on his hip. I am a violin player, and took special interest in this. He had fashioned the violin after the rabab, the traditional fiddle of Morocco, much of northern Africa and through the middle east. The rabab usually has a more nasally, vocal sound than the violin. It usually consists of a gourd body covered in sheepskin, with a a long thin neck and 3 strings. So his half violin, half rabab was familiar and foreign to me. His playing mimicked the singer as close as possible, as if they were sometimes copying or answering each other, a discussion in unison. And it had a vocal quality that was rough and percussive, not languid and smooth like I was taught to play. It seemed more natural. One man played a long necked lute, probably a guimbri, the bassy relative of the lutes of west africa and an ancestor of the American banjo. The player plucked a low register kind of melody that complimented the rythym of the drummer on the dumbek, the versatile and tight skinned, cylindrical drum found all the way from Turkey through the middle east and into Africa. The sound just like the name…doom-bak!
The lute player sang and eyed the crowd. We watched, and the musicians watched us. After each song they reminded the crowd they could request. They asked us two times and we refused but watched. The third time they latched onto us, as we were the only westerners that stuck around for a few songs. I felt as if I should give for one song at least, and when I reached into my pocket, I pulled out a 10 dirham coin. I had only been in the country for 2 days, but I knew this would be a lot for a song. It was too late, I wasn’t comfortable enough with the money there to start digging for change, so I gave it to them. The immediate attention we got from this donation made it obvious it was too much. The men played directly towards us, forgetting there were others watching. We had tipped generously, and they would play this song only for us. Their eyes were directed straight at us and they wore broad smiles in appreciation for what we had given them, they played a long song and played with enthusiasm. Their direct playing made me self-conscious a little, but I quickly realized I was part of a bigger game, the market that had been running on this premise for a long time. When they were done, they directed polite bows towards us and it was time to leave them to their next song.
The hundreds of stalls in the square were smoking with the exotic foods, and the sounds of the music and people faded as we walked back to our hotel.