Master Musicians of Jajouka at Kennedy Center
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Wednesday, February 25, my wife and I attended the Master Musicians' performance at the Kennedy Center's Eisenhower Theater. It was like a dream come true. Eight guys in green robes. Seated. Four drums, four winds. Two winds sometimes played drums one the fiddle. Bashir played winds and gimbri (like a lute). As befits the setting, for a long while the audience was somewhat sedate, but groovin' and appreciative. A substantial contingent in the balcony with us whistled, shouted, not in English (Bashir responded in same), and tried to clap along. The music was everything we would expect from the recordings. I could recognize some favorite numbers, but more fully realized over a longer playing time, with more gradual transitions, accelerandos and crescendos, and more variations. Really, you could have six guys playing drums and sometimes no more than two playing the same beat. Very intricate and subtly changing. 
One drummer put down his drum, the one in the picture above, stepped out of his shoes and did a comical Boujeloud dance. He picked out certain people in the front and clapped or stomped at them. But he did not hit any women with a branch, as in the traditional dance. He got us all clapping on the beat. This is the "Boujeloudia", a traditional dance, part of a festival dating back millennia to pre-Islamic times. The dancer in the village wears goat skins and branches and is called Boujeloud or The Father of Skins. It is said he is a part-goat-part-man character resembling Pan.
Later, the Musicians all got up and stepped forward on stage. They gradually accelerated and played louder, and more in the high register. I hardly thought louder was possible. I don't know why they had microphones at the chairs but were louder by far without them. Then they really cut loose and whipped us up to a proper frenzy (as close as you get in this setting), clapping, whooping and ululating. They took turns dancing while playing. One large, round Raita player stepped forward, a few times (comically) to send out a very high tweet.
I posted this particular selection from Apocalypse Across the Sky because they played it in the concert. There are two or more playing the drone on the album. But in concert, and on their new album, "Live Vol. 1" (a promising title), there are only two guys playing the lira (bamboo flute). Bashir plays the lead and one man plays the drone. For the entire length of the song, the man never took a breath, but apparently used circular breathing.
An hour and a half went by and we did not want to see them go.
Many thanks to Mollifire for tipping me off that they had this engagement in DC. http://mog.com/mollifire/blog/1194836
This video shows some of that dancing.
Locating MOG account...
Comments (1)
very nice! One of the wonderful things about MOG - where else can you hear such diverse elements of the musical universe!
Thanks Spike 1!