In Turn completes its coverage of Morocco’s Master Musicians of Jajouka with a review of their Toronto performance. Photos by Joel Trenaman. (Read the interview/show preview.)
The nine men of Jajouka arrived at the Phoenix Concert Theatre for a July 15 performance—their first in Toronto in fifteen years — to almost otherworldly expectations.
A tradition passed down over thousands of years. The originators of the world music genre. Spiritual expression rooted in transcendental mysticism. These are some of the heady descriptions that have followed the Master Musicians of Jajouka around the globe for decades.
A week before the show, featured performer and hereditary standard-bearer Bachir Attar told my fellow blogger that, “This music can build, for the human being, mercy in the heart.” So, for a night, I put the details of the history and debates over rightful group representation out of my head, and focused on the visceral experience of a cultural legacy.
Scene-setting cross-cultural beats by Toronto’s DJ medicineman (Richard Martin) provided the preface, and at 9:20 p.m. the stage curtains retracted to reveal the master musicians in unadorned green robes with black trim that nearly hid their white pants. Seated in a slightly concave line of chairs on lush, beaded rugs, each man’s face held a look of measured intensity. On the left: six drummers with three different sizes of double-headed goatskin drums (types of tarija and tebel), poised to strike with either sticks or hands. On the far right was a violinist, flanked by two gimbri players, including Bachir (one of multiple Attar family members in the group). He offered a brief introduction before hunching over to strike a chord on the body of his three-stringed lute-like instrument.
Within a few minutes, each group member had chimed in, adding a unique rhythm to what would become a mesmerizing barrage of sound. Many of the men seemed locked in faraway mental abstractions, faces scored by long years or uncertain hardships. The various elements somehow began to furnish the trance-like mise en scène that many have witnessed before. The walls of my hesitant, critical skepticism began to crumble as the cascading tempos and sporadic vocals filled the theatre.
One of the drummers suddenly got up and slid to the centre of the stage, shoulders shaking, body swaying, as he lifted his robe just enough to show off his careful footwork. More crowd-pleasing antic than traditional art form (or so it seemed), it did draw some of the 250 or so audience members to their feet. In this first instance, the dancing diminished the gravity of the moment, but during later songs, the occasional addition of nimble steps added a solemn subtlety and visual flair to the sound collages.
Following the first three compositions—which lasted just under an hour—the group realigned themselves on stage; five players switched instruments, becoming a sort of horn section. The master musicians use the lira, a flute made of bamboo, and the ghaita (also rhaita), which has two reeds like an oboe.
The new sound was shrill and haunting—bordering on cacophony—until the four drummers began churning out complementary tribal beats. This setup led to more soloing from Bachir and others, but most powerful was the use of call-and-response techniques. The uplifting interplay between vocalists was matched by back-and-forth surges between the drums and wind instruments.
The intensity of the experience kept rising. With the sixth arrangement came the addition of visual designs projected on the back stage wall, spiralling at a dizzying rate. A small dose of microphone reverb sent echoes throughout the room. Waves of energy rippled through my body. I threw my head back and closed my eyes, but soon opened them to watch the flurry of mallets on tight drum skins and fingers jabbing notes in what now seemed like full improvisation. The crowd was finally fully engaged, nearly all on their feet. The musicians rose up from their chairs, moving to the front of the stage to match the energy level, some prancing along the edge in frenzied lines, still absorbed in their playing.
A single encore closed the 100-minute concert; seven glorious pieces of disarming, magical Jajouka music proved to be transcendent after all.
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