On An Overgrown Path

In Marrakech storks are considered to be holy birds, and historically they have nested in the minarets of the city's many mosques. But recently they have moved to the top of telecommunication towers. If those antenae are 5G and QAnon is correct there will soon be two headed chicks in that nest.

Quite rightly the gender balance in classical music is being corrected. But too much emphasis is being placed on the women musicians who achieve celebrity status in an art form eviscerated by celebrity fixation , and too little attention is paid to the less fortunate women who are at last being given the opportunity to make music. While travelling in Morocco I attended one of the music workshops that Ahmed Abdelhak Kaâb    runs for local women in Essaouira on Morocco's Atlantic coast . That is Ahmed in my photo above; he is an adept of the Derkawa Sufi Order , and as a musician has performed extensively in Europe. His workshops have a particular importance because although they are not repressed in the same way as their counterparts in the Gulf States, women still play a subordinate role in Moroccan society and suffer from low levels of literacy . Unlike more orthodox branches of Islam, Sufism has an enlightened attitude to women, and the mystic and poet Rab...

That is the young muleteer who accompanied me on my trek in Morocco's High Atlas earlier this year - my backpack is strapped to the mule. The photo was taken above the village of Imlil on the Tizi M'zzik mountain pass at 2450 metres. This is Berber country and not surprisingly Mahler's music is almost unknown in Morocco. However on Sunday (Oct 13) l'Orchestre Philharmonique du Maroc performs his Fifth Symphony in Marrakech - which is 67 kilometres from Imlil - as part of a four city regional premiere tour of the work. In today's online culture the outsider is a threatened species thanks to clandestine selective algorithms and self-curated filter bubbles . Which means a vital element of creativity - the sand in the oyster - is at risk. As the American born Naga Sadhu Baba Rampuri explains*: I think it's the outsider that has the ability, or at least the opportunity, to look at things from a distance, rather than being in the midst of things and assigning s...

When I interviewed conductor Olivier Holt in 2016 about his work with l'Orchestre Philharmonique du Maroc he explained that his mission with the Moroccan orchestra was "to provoke curiosity and joy". There is no better evidence of that mission than his ambitious programme next month which brings Mahler's Fifth Symphony to four Moroccan cities including Marrakech. The concerts are this year's contribution to the orchestra's annual celebration of Les religions à l’unisson promoting unity, tolerance and peace between the three great monotheistic religions*. Paired with the Mahler symphony is an arrangement of Schubert's Ave Maria commissioned by l'Orchestre Philharmonique du Maroc with soloists including tenor Smahi El Harati, who has sung the Muslim proclamation Allahu Akbar (God is great) for a concert audience including Pope Francis and Morocco's King Mohammed VI . That header photo was taken by me at an al fresco performance by l'O...

Stop Clickbait is a Slipped Disc killer - a Chrome extension that claims to identify clickbait, allowing the user to block similar content. Which prompted me to create that 100% click-repellent headline by fusing together the titles of two new albums I have been enjoying*. The headline definitely won't bring me 164,189 'readers' in a day or a phony blogging award . But if one person is swayed, it's job done . Ramon Goose's Long Road to Tiznit is a compressed - 37 minute - blues-inflected road trip from Marrakech to Tiznit on Morocco's Atlantic coast. Tiznit is a Berber settlement where, for me, the true Morocco begins . It was the scene of some of Paul Bowles' classic location recordings , and Ramon Goose juxtaposes old-school blues with jam sessions featuring local Berber musicians. Strange how in an increasingly blue world , blues as a music artform is so neglected. On Morning Haikus, Afternoon Ragas psych-folk exponent Buck Curran strips his art ...

Morocco was a favourite destination for Sir Winston Churchill's painting trips, and as discussed in a post yesterday he stayed at La Moumonia Hotel in Marrakech. What is striking when reviewing Churchill's Moroccan paintings is the preponderance of Islamic subjects. An example above is his 1948 painting of the Ben Youssef Mosque - famous for its madrasa - in Marrakech. Of course Morocco is a Muslim country rich in visual wonders, so Churchill's preoccupation with Islamic imagery may not be surprising. But there is another more tantalising explanation. In a 1907 letter to Churchill his future sister-in-law, Lady Gwendoline Bertie pleads: “Please don’t become converted to Islam; I have noticed in your disposition a tendency to orientalise, Pasha-like tendencies, I really have. If you come into contact with Islam your conversion might be effected with greater ease than you might have supposed, call of the blood, don’t you know what I mean, do fight against it”. Surp...

Marrakech is a city of powerful experiences, where the sounds, sights and smells of North Africa assault every sense. But what happened next must have been, in the jargon of the day, truly mind-blowing. Nick and his friends went down for a meal in the smart French quarter of Marrakech. As they sat down they noticed the trademark floppy hat of celebrity photographer Cecil Beaton. With him were Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Keith's girlfriend Anita Pallenberg and 'several other assorted Stones and hangers-on'... Richard Charkin says that Nick and his friends were astonished. They'd come over 1000 miles from home to immerse themselves in Moroccan culture, only to find themselves in a restaurant with the apostles of the counter culture... Fuelled by some cheap local wine, they told the rock-star party that they should hear their friend... And so it was that The Rolling Stones sat and listened as 18-year-old Nick Drake serenaded them with a selection of Dylan and Donovan co...

News that Formula 1 has dropped its titillating 'grid girls' has received widespread media coverage . Which prompts me to republish the photo above. It first appeared two weeks ago in my article about the Marrkaech ePrix . This was a round in the emission-free Formula E motor-racing series that uses electric power for its cars. Instead of the traditional grid girls Formula E uses post-millennial 'grid kids' as seen in my photo. Formula E is a laudable exercise in showing there is life beyond fossil fuels. Oil is one our valuable natural resources and quite rightly considerable attention is focussed on its preservation; just as attention is focussed on the despoiling of other natural resources such as forestry and water reserves. But puzzlingly little attention is paid to the sustainability of those grid kids. We have forgotten that this young generation is our most valuable resource, because without them growing into wise and responsible adults there will be no need ...

In 2008 my compulsive exploration of music's overgrown paths led me to present the first and almost certainly the only radio broadcast of a Gnawa trance ritual . This project was a collaboration with KamarStudios in Marrakech which had recorded and released commercially the two hour long ‘black’ section of the twelve hour Nights of the Seven Colours lila - trance ritual - with which the Gnawa celebrate the creation of the universe. My overnight broadcast of the black lila was prefaced by an ambient session from two young Marrakechi DJs which mixed electronic trance and more traditional sounds, a session also released as part of the Black Album package. The Gnawa practice a folk Islam containing strong elements of animism and consider themselves descendants of Sidi Bilal , who was the first black person to convert to Islam, a companion of the Prophet and the first muezzin in Islam. The Gnawa identify with Bilal because of his colour, because he was a slave and for his conversio...

Certainly it is our obligation to show to the whole world that we can live together no matter to which culture and religion we belong... Outside of our religious beliefs there is only one God who attracts us to him and invites us to unremittingly build the world with Him, a world in which man is no longer a wolf to his fellow man, but rather a world in which we recognize each other as brothers and as children of our Father. That message was the response by the prior of the monastery of Our Lady of the Atlas in Midelt, Morocco to an ill-judged letter from President Sarkozy of France, who had written to the monks about the need for them to participate "in the process of globalisation"*. The Midelt monastery had been established after Our Lady of the Atlas in Tibhirine, Algeria was abandoned following the murder of seven monks by terrorists in 1996. The photo was taken by me a few weeks ago and shows the Christmas lights in the avenue leading to Marrakesh's Koutoubia mosque...

Rumours of Norman Lebrecht retiring to open a technology store in Marrakech seem to have substance.

That photo was taken by me a few days ago and shows the Marrakesh Express pulling in to Meknes. The train was immortalised in a track on Crosby, Stills & Nash's 1969 debut album which tells how on the journey "Ducks and pigs and chickens call". In a Rolling Stone interview Graham Nash explained that on the 1960s Marrakesh Express "Just like the song says, there were ducks and pigs and chickens all over the place and people lighting fires". As pigs are notably scarce in Muslim Morocco we must surmise that the lyric's reference to "Blowing smoke rings from the corners of my my, my, my, my mouth" describes something more potent than Marlboros. Also on Facebook and Twitter . Any copyrighted material is included as "fair use" for critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s).

That shrine to King Mohammed VI of Morocco - the fifth richest man in Africa with a personal worth of $5.7 billion - was photographed by me recently in Marrakech . Others find the Moroccan ruler's regime less lovable ; they include the forgotten Sahrawi people of the Western Sahara whose cause is bravely championed by Sahrawi musician Aziza Brahim - sample here . The photo below of a Sahrawi was taken by me in Guelmim on the edge of the disputed territory and comes from my 2015 photo essay . Morocco's latest request to rejoin the African Union 32 years after leaving in a dispute over the Western Sahara confirms that King Mohammed considers his country's illegal annexation of the territory is a done deal. In Morocco as in so many other countries - Muslim and otherwise - the words of the 14th century Persian poet Hafez now ring so true: Love which once seemed so easy, has fallen into difficulties No comped goods and services used in this post. Any copyrighted mater...

The gigantic echo chamber that is social media is resonating with far too much unhelpful bombast from both EU referendum camps. So it is with some trepidation that I am posting on the subject today. But this quote from - of all people - Boris Johnson caught my eye in yesterday's Telegraph : It was wrong of the Government to offer the public a binary choice on the EU... It caught my eye not because I have any sympathy at all for Boris Johnson's politics, but because it reflects the dangers of dualism. Norman Perryman reminded us of those dangers some time ago when he explained: "We are by nature analogue (def. "a continuous spectrum of values") beings, consisting of fluid organic substances." Too often today - especially on social media - we forget that humankind holds a continuous and fluid spectrum of values that cannot be forcibly polarised into a tick in one of two boxes, just as the true sound of music cannot be reduced to a 0 or 1 . The dangers of t...

Eight years ago I was among the first to highlight the imminent technology-driven demise of the traditional halakis - storytellers - in the famous Djemaa el Fna public space in Marrakech, Morocco. Since then others have paid homage to the dying oral art of the halakis , including Richard Hamilton whose excellent book The Last Storytellers documents some of the stories they tell. When I revisited Marrakech a few weeks ago I was delighted to find that one of the biggest night time crowds in the Djemaa el Fna was gathered around a young storyteller. This was a story worth sharing. So standing at the back of the audience I took out my camera to discretely - no flash - snatch the photograph seen above. But the halaki saw me out of the corner of his eye, cut off his story in mid sentence, and barged his way through the listeners to thrust his hat in my face and demand money. So the good news is that storytelling is alive and well in Marrakech. But at a price. No review samples used ...

That photo of Marrakech's celebrated Jemma el-Fnaa was taken by me a few weeks ago. One of the books that illuminated my visit to the Red City was Stephen Davis' To Marrakech by Aeroplane . Stephen is best known as the biographer of Led Zeppelin, Bob Marley and the Rolling Stones, and ghost writer for Michael Jackson, but he also collaborated with me on a two part feature about the Master Musicians of Jajouka , who come from the Rif Mountains in the north of Morocco. Performance artist Brion Gysin , who was a long time resident of Morocco, played a pivotal role in bring the Master Musicians to the attention of Brian Jones , and it was the Rolling Stones' posthumously released album of their music which introduced the Master Musicians to an international audience. To Marrakech by Aeroplane , which is rich in anecdotes about Brion Gysin's Moroccan circle, is published by Inkblot Publications , and that Rhode Island based independent publisher has also made available ...

In recent years I have followed in the footsteps of Alma Mahler on the wartime refugee route from Vichy France into Spain, descended through the Samaria Gorge in Crete, and travelled overland from Delhi to the Tibetan Buddhist heartland of Ladakh. My peregrinations continued this month with a trek in Morocco's Atlas Mountains which started in the village of Setti Fatma , seen in the photo below. Nestled in the Ourika Valley at 1500 metres, Setti Fatma is where the road into the Atlas Mountains ends, and it is a favourite bolt-hole for Moroccans escaping from the desert heat and tawdry commercialism of Marrakech on the plain below. There is scarcely space for the road and houses in the narrow valley, so the restaurant tables are set on the riverbed; in the photo below a waiter is crossing the river carrying the Moroccan national dish, the tagine. This is Berber country ; the unique music of the Berbers (Amazigh) was captured by Paul Bowles' 1959 fie...

Quite rightly the gender balance in classical music is being corrected. But too much emphasis is being placed on the women musicians who achieve celebrity status in an art form eviscerated by celebrity fixation , and too little attention is paid to the less fortunate women who are at last being given the opportunity to make music. While in Morocco recently I attended one of the music workshops that Ahmed Abdelhak Kaâb has been running for local women in Essaouira for five years. That is Ahmed in my photo above; he is an adept of the Derkawa Sufi Order , and as a musician has performed extensively in Europe. His workshops have a particular importance because although they are not repressed in the same way as their counterparts in the Gulf States, women still play a subordinate role in Moroccan society and suffer from low levels of literacy . Unlike more orthodox branches of Islam, Sufism has an enlightened attitude to women, and the mystic and poet Rabi'a al-...