AmmA

One of the highlights of our recent trip to Marrakech was the evening we spent in the desert- we were driven to the edge of the Sahara and watched the sun go down from a cliff edge and then went to a camp where along with several other parties of tourists we were treated to some traditional musicians and a meal. The first band were a local band playing traditional Berber music, five men who became my new favourite band quite quickly. 

The four front men all played qraqebs (a large Moroccan castanet) and sang, call and response vocals, their voices going to and fro while they danced in a row or in a circle. Behind them was a seated guitarist playing a gimbri, who played a series of desert blues riffs. They played five or six songs one of which was about being spiritually cleansed. As they finished their set more voices echoed in from behind where we were sitting and five women took to the stage, a group we later learned were called Four Sisters. The five women played hand drums and sang, again lots of call and response, one taking the lead and the four replying.

After Four Sisters finished the first group came back an outfit change and now with a man playing the pipe while the four percussionist/ singers played drums and sang. 

The evening finished with fire eaters and sparks, some spectacular moments and a DJ who began playing some thumping, very much non- traditional music including a cover of I Will Survive. 

It was quite an experience, the bands especially. Later on the five men were standing watching the fire eating and dancing in their track suit bottoms and baseball caps, all quite young but also clearly devoted to keeping the music of their people alive (and making some money from tourists too). The drive back from the desert to Marrakech at midnight was an experience too, down ravines, past broken bridges and at one point chased by wild dogs. 

Ernie over 27 Leggies is a far greater authority on African music than I am. I've been having a poke around in his back pages where I found this...

AmmA

AmmA came out a year ago and is by Bab L'Bluz, a Marrakech group led by singer Yousra Mansour who in this song sings the story of mothers awakened by the reality of a society filled with injustices. 'Awaken women/ Rise women/ I am not half a man/ That time is over', she sings. Powerful stuff, the music of North Africa made contemporary. There's an album too, Swaken, which you can find at Bandcamp. 

Desert

We went to the desert twice during our trip to Morocco. On each occasion it was a mind blowing and profound experience. The first excursion was to a pool resort on the edge of the Sahara. We sunned ourselves, had some more delicious Moroccan food and looked out into the desert, looking at the ridges and wadi, the endless shale and rock extending into the distance. My brother- in- law Harvey and I took a wander out of the resort and into the desert. We didn't go too far for obvious reasons. It was pretty humbling...

The second visit was the following evening, a trip further into the Sahara to see the sunset and then have a meal and enjoy some evening entertainment from local musicians. The drive out there was an experience in itself, turning off the road and onto a dust track that went on and on, over bridges that crossed dried out river beds, past camels and quad biking, tents and partially constructed/ falling down buildings, down a dip that I wouldn't have attempted in a minibus, round some tight bends, eventually arriving at our desert destination. The view from my seat through the van's tinted windows presented me this shot...

And then this one with some camel riders appearing over the horizon...

I don't know about you but my childhood was peppered with deserts- Indian Jones films, TV, books, comics, pop videos, Silk Cut and Turkish Delight adverts, Lawrence of Arabia (in 1981 when I was eleven years old there was a fancy dress party. Most of the eleven year olds went as Dr. Who, characters from Star Wars or Adam Ant. I went as Lawrence of Arabia- I was that kind of eleven year old). To be out in the Sahara and see camels (admittedly ridden by tourists) coming into view over the ridge was jaw dropping. The desert provokes a genuine sense of awe- it's vast and ancient, it will be there forever, long after we're all gone, it continues to grow each year (as Manchester's New Fast Automatic Daffodils noted on their epic 1990 single Big)...

Big

Once we arrived at our destination we followed our guide up a hill to a ridge of rocks where we waited for the sunset. Staring out into the desert as the sun began to dip was something else, an experience that's difficult to put into words- the immensity of the desert, the feeling of being a very small part of everything, the lives of people who have survived in this environment for thousands of years, the sense of staring into the past somehow... it was all very moving. As a friend commented on Facebook recently, 'deserts speak'.

I've got loads more photos of the desert, many of which will inevitably appear accompanying posts here over the upcoming weeks. 

In March 2019 Andrew Weatherall played at The Beta Hotel in Marrakech, an event hosted by Faber and involving David Keenan, Bugged Out and Heavenly recordings. Andrew's set was a dub set and I imagine his seriously dubbed out selections would have sounded pretty otherworldly in Marrakech. The set wasn't recorded but Sean Johnston unearthed Andrew's source CDs and shared them with The Flightpath Estate two eyars ago. The tracks were sequenced in the order they appear on Andrew's discs and uploaded to Mixcloud. You can listen to them here, two hours and eleven minutes of Moroccan Weatherdub at The Beat Hotel. 

Ourika

Bagging Area's adventures in Morocco part two. Day two in Marrakech saw us up early for a trip to the Atlas Mountains, the ridge of snow capped mountains that separate the Sahara Desert from the sea, spanning Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia. The part we went to, Ourika, is about 40 km south of Marrakech, and gave us a good idea of the spread of the city out through its suburbs to the mountains, the swarm of traffic giving way to emptier roads. Driving in Morocco, especially in Marrakech but also out beyond the city can be a bit hair raising, motorbikes and scooters weaving in and out among cars and busses, pedestrians stepping out into roads and onto zebra crossings no- one seems to intend to stop for, cars overtaking constantly and everyone honking their horn as often as possible. Once out into the countryside our minibus took us to the foothills of the mountains, heading for the Ourika Valley, beginning to climb and wind our way through Berber villages. Funnily, the only piece of Western pop music we heard all week came on the local radio station as we began to climb the road pictured above, the van's tinny speakers and ever more spectacular scenery making Mr Bowie seem even more otherworldly than usual...

Ashes To Ashes

We stopped on the way for a break. Any taxi ride out of Marrakesh built in a break that involved us admiring a view and then visiting a shop where Berber products were offered to us- pottery, textiles, jewelry, Argon oil. We then re- boarded our bus and headed further into the mountains.

We were up early for the trip, our guide keen to get us to the waterfall as early as possible so it would be quiet. It was worth the early start. We began climbing the route following our guide, a scramble up rocks and mountain paths, over rickety foot bridges and through villages and houses built into the hillsides, all set up for tourists coming through several times a day. 

The local people are the Berber people, who speak a different language to the people in Marrakech (Shilha is the local dialect). They've eked an existence out in the mountains for centuries and today are pretty reliant on tourism. The climb eventually brought us to the waterfall and an opportunity to sit down, drink more mint tea and enjoy the mountain view. 

Our descent took us back to the village and lunch at a riverside restaurant. Yes, it felt touristy but hey, we were tourists, and it was quite an experience, sitting on cushions beside the fast flowing Ourika River, eating the wonderful food while a pair of local musicians played. Across the way, the parking of the minibuses and vans over the river from us was fairly alarming, their back ends hanging out over the drop to the river, Italian Job style. 

                                             

This is Goul El Hak El Mont Kayna by Moroccan singer Najat Aatabou, a song from 1992. If you click play and let it run you'll recognise the riff that comes hits at fifty seconds, an instant blast of Moroccan music that ended up with Ed and Tom Chemical settling out of court after they borrowed it for their song Galvanize. 

Marrakech

Marrakech was amazing, an unforgettable experience and unlike anywhere I've been before. Apologies if Bagging Area becomes a bit of a travel blog over the next few days. I'll try to supply music to go along with the photos and writing and see where things go- this blog has never really planned more than a few days ahead. We landed at Marrakech airport last Sunday morning having flown out of Manchester at 6.30 am straight into the hustle and bustle of Marrakech. My nice had booked our accommodation for the five of us, a four bedroom house (a riad) in the centre of the city. 

The riad was in the medina, down a long, twisting back alley which if we hadn't had a guide to meet us when we got to the top of the alleyway, we'd have thought twice about going all the way to the end of. Once down at the end, past the permanent group of young men hanging out on one of the corners, dodging the scooters and motorcycles that pepper the streets, roads and passageways, we went through a set of grilled gates and to our front door which led us into this...

The riad was central, a ten minute walk from the souk but inside it was another world, an oasis of calm with a roof terrace. Five times a day the sound of the muezzin calling people to prayer echoed out over the city, one of the muezzin starting it and then others joining in, harmonising- an unearthly and very moving sound. 

The souk is a maze of streets and alleyways filled with shops and market stalls selling all the Moroccan goods you can think of- tea pots and glasses for drinking mint tin, spices, leather goods, slippers, scarves, ceremonial daggers, bracelets and bangles, kaftans, earrings, rugs, hats, meat- as well as more modern goods- iPhones, headphones, football shirts- with the vendors constantly offering you prices and telling you to come and have a look. 

Haggling is part of the process for every transaction in the souk- they offer you a price, then drop it slightly, you offer a lower one, they counter, you get a note out which you're happy to pay- it takes some getting used to. The streets are jam packed in places. If you stop for a moment to glance at an item or make any eye contact, you get an offer to buy something. Wandering round the souk was amazing and with no real street names or sings, very easy to get lost in. We managed to track our way back to the riad but got hopelessly lost one evening looking for the main square (Jemaa el-Fnaa). 

We had five days, spending several of them exploring Marrakech- the main square during the day and at night is a world in itself. During the day it's filled with fruit and spice stalls, snake charmers with cobras, men with sad looking monkeys on chains available for photos and women painting henna tattoos. At night, the square has a different energy, rammed with locals and tourists, scores of local bands of musicians and dancers playing Berber music- percussionists with qraqebs (large castanet like instruments) and hand drums surrounding a single guitarist playing a gnawa or gimbri and men chanting and singing. The music was incredible, very rootsy and funky, the riffs played by the guitarists sounding like the basis for so much 20th century guitar music, the blues and the 60s bands onward, with North African percussion and rhythms.

Everyone's looking for money, everyone expects to be tipped. It takes a little getting used to but was a joy to experience and the scare stories you can find on the internet about pickpockets, abusive comments to western women and rip off merchants were unfounded in our experience, and apart from one meal which left me sidelined for a day, the food was incredible. The Moroccan specialty is tagine, chicken and lemon or mince and eggs cooked in tagine pots and served with rice or couscous, lots of spices and flavours. Mint tea and strong coffee. Nutty biscuits and pastries. 

We had a load of other adventures- a day in the Atlas Mountains climbing to a waterfall with dinner on cushions by a river, a day at a pool in the desert and a night seeing the sunset in the Western Sahara which blew my mind- but I'll come to them over the next few days. 

In our several taxi rides to and from places the radio stations were almost always playing Moroccan or African music. Some on the spot Googling and use of Shazam took place. One of the artists that we heard several times and who sounded great while driving out of Marrakech, swerving across lanes and dodging motorcyclists, scooterists and pedestrians, through the suburbs with blocks of flats and corner cafes, petrol stations with queues of scooters and roadside sellers of fruit and mint, was Bombino, a Tuareg singer and guitarist from Niger. This song is Mahegagh (What Shall I Do?), a track from (I think) 2012- eleven minutes of Saharan desert blues. 

Looking At The World Through The Sunset In Your Eyes

No Sunday mix today and no more posts until next weekend either; we're off to Marrakesh, Morocco for a few days, a holiday to celebrate my brother-in -law's 60th. Marrakesh is by all accounts an busy and vibrant city, with plenty of exploring to be done in the Medina, the souks, the palaces and gardens. We also have an excursion to the Atlas mountains planned which should be good. 

Graham Nash wrote this song while on the train from Casablanca to Marrakesh in 1969, a reaction to everything and everyone he saw on the train. The Hollies rejected the song as not commercial enough- Nash was already moving beyond The Hollies and the song became a Crosby, Stills and Nash one, recorded for their 1969 debut. It was also a May '69 CSN single. 

Marrakesh Express

In the interests of balance Iggy Pop has said that Marrakesh Express 'may be the worst song ever written.'

Funtime

Back next weekend. See you then.