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.