Here's a vintage stash of folk music field recordings made and released in the 1950s and 1960s by one Jean Mazel, a French cinéaste and ethnologue, about whom I can find little information online. Most of his published recordings (and a disambiguation with anamesake) can be found here, and a number of his publications are listed here.
Jean Mazel
The recordings presented here were originally released on one 10-inch album (33 RPM) four 7-inch EPs (45 RPM). They have been resequenced and made available for streaming/download by the "UK-based one-man trancedental-drone band" Tuluum Shimmering:
In addition to being offered in their raw form, the Moroccan recordings have been incorporated into 3 CDs worth of Tuluun Shimmering's psychedelic recordings, also available from their Bandcamp page, or as CDs from their homepage.
The original 10-inch album features linking narration in French. If you're interested to hear it in its original state, check the YouTube clips below. (I'm happy to have the narration removed in Tuluum's version. It reminded me of the
pretentious voiceovers I heard between acts at the Folklore festival in
Marrakech in 1995.)
I went looking online for the original artwork/notes, and to see where the original tracks fit into Tuluum's sequence. If you're interested in that sort of thing, you can find the images I collected and my crosswalk spreadsheet here.
Thanks to tape aficiondo and old Berkeley pal @boxwalla for calling my attention to this.
More sounds from northern Morocco this week. It's Ghaita Jbaliya:
ghaita = oboe (shawm, double reed instrument...)
Jbaliya = of the Jbala people/region
Oboe and drum ensembles are found all over North Africa - it's a perfect ensemble for outdoors, where the shrill piercing tones of the ghaita (or zorna in Algeria and further east) announce the presence of festivities. The typical accompanying drum is the tbel barrel drum, as shown below. (The bendir pictured on the j-card above seems to be a mistake.)
The Stash has previously featured some ghaita music in a post on Aissawa music here. Ghaita and tbel groups can be found all over Morocco, and the particular music played depends on the surrounding regional traditions. Thus ghaitajbaliya features melodies and rhythms particular to the Jbala region. Dig, for example the characteristic 9/8 rhythmic pattern that opens track 1 (embedded at bottom of page).
Though ghaitajbaliya is a regional folk tradition, it was, curiously, one of the first Moroccan musical genres to be exported and consumed in the West, courtesy of the Master Musicians of Jajouka and the Bryon Gysin/Brian Jones/Rolling Stones connection. (See Philip Schuyler's article "Joujouka/Jajouka/Zahjoukah. Moroccan Music and Euro-American Imagination" for the definitive analysis of that story/phenomenon.)
By the way, if you've wondered about the images of rifle-wielding turbaned horesmen seen on this cassette and others (e.g., here, here, and here), that's a representation of tborida (also called "fantasia"). It's a type of performance that takes place at tribal gatherings (moussem-s), and sometimes at very big weddings or other social gatherings. In my understanding, it stands as a symbol for Moroccan Arab rural-ness.
And lastly, I love the cassette imprint of "Sawt Bouhlal" (the voice of Bouhlal) - Bouhlal is a mountain in the region of Al Hoceima (n the Jbala region, of course).
My stash is stocked mainly with tapes from central Morocco - Marrakech, Beni Mellal and Rabat being the primary triangle points of my Moroccan travels. However, I do have a handful of tapes from northern Morocco. The last time I was there was in 2001, and I tried to pick up things that were unavailable further south. I know much less about the northern artists and traditions than I do about the central and southern ones, so I relied on friendly tape vendors to steer me toward what the north has to offer. I'll do what I can to provide some context for these tapes.
I'll start with a nice tape from the artist Hajji Srifi. According to Yala.fm, he was born in the 1940s, has been recording since as early as the 1970s, and is based in the area of Al Hoceima, on the Mediterranean coast.
Most tracks on this tape (except track 6) fit into the basic 6/8 groove structure found across Morocco. And the prominence in the mix of keyboard, violin and percussion set it within a typical chaâbi soundscape. However, a Jbala tinge can be heard through a few sonic markers drawn from a couple of Jbala musical genres: Taqtouqa Jbaliya and Ghaita Jbaliya (more on these in the next few posts).
In the title track (embedded toward the bottom of this post), for example, the opening keyboard timbre mimics that of a ghaita (oboe), such as one would hear in the ghaita jbaliya genre (made famous outside of Morocco by the Master Musicians of Jajouka). The vocal melody of this track reminds me of the mode and contour of taqtouqa jbaliya melodies (see YouTube video below, starting around 2:04).
Elsewhere on the tape, other Jbala signifiers can be heard. The oud and small guinbri (or gnibri) used in taqtouqa jbaliya can be heard here and there. (Listen to the very very beginning of track 4 to hear the high-pitched little guinbri.) And something about Hajji's style of vocal vibrato seems typically Jbala to me. See especially the intro to track 6 to hear this vocal quality. Track 6 finishes out the album in the loopy 9/8 taqtuqa rhythm.
As you can see from the video above, Hajji Srifi performs not only in chaâbi-style but also in more traditional modes (and costumes) than this tape and his suit-and-tie photo alone might suggest. Yala.fm has a large number of his more recent albums streaming and downloadable here. Some are more traditional sounding, others incorporate the trappings of modern chaâbi, But all of them are rooted in that Jbala sound. Moroccan Tape Stash gives a big thumbs to this great sound, and thanks those tape vendors in Tangier for doing me right!