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      I had plenty of questions.  Where did this music it come from?  According to all present, the style originated with Bilal, Muhammed's African slave and loyal companion. He allegedly had the ability to heal the sick with this very style of music, which had somehow reached Sudan with the spread of Islam, and spread northward to Morocco from there.  Afrique Noir, they said.  Black Africa - also known as Sub-Saharan Africa.  Listening to the sound of it, I noticed many key features of African music, including a distorted vocal timbre, polyrhythm, and a scale of five or less notes.  Although the words were in Arabic, it was clear that this was African-derived music.

     They told me that the song they had played was named after the Sudan - and that it was also called "Memona".  It took a bit of explaining what this word was but it seemed to mean "from the soul".  The guy in the white jacket seemed really adamant to explain that Memona meant "Il y a quelque chose qui cloche".  I had no idea what that meant at the time, but coming home I looked it up - it meant "There is something wrong".  Could this be the Moroccan word for the blues?  They also insisted that Gnawa in Marrakech were just as good as Gnawa in Essouaria , and more innovative to boot.

    The hour came to head back to the bus station.  I sort of wanted to stay and hang out with Muhammed some more - the simmering, conical-topped dish was beginning to bubble and emit some tempting smells - , but Chafiq wanted to go.  He seemed insistent, anxious.  I had a dim suspicion that there was something amiss in his intentions, and I thought about insisting.  Here was, after all, a genuine Gnawa master, perhaps the final object of my search.  But something made me acquiesce - it was the Tao of Traveling, a passive non-resistance to life and its events, even including the sometimes pushy wishes of others

        Giving a few dirhams to thank the Ma'alem for his kindness (and to defray the cost of the kif which was packed and passed repeatedly), Chafiq and I returned along the labyrinthine path from which we came.  I bought a few bananas for the trip and stuck them in my bag.  The spirit of adventure and journey returned as I incredulously followed this strangely-dressed man back through the Meddina to the bus station, to continue on to parts unknown..

 

 Returning to bus station with Chafiq
 in costume, carrying guembri

 

        We ended up waiting for almost two hours at the bus station.  My stomach gurgled in revenge for leaving before tasting that delicious-smelling tajine.  I met Chafiq's bus station friends, a rogues' gallery of Moroccan men.  They were all in their twenties and their form of amusement included lifting up a youngster who had come wandering into the group - someone's little brother - by his neck and holding him up to the bus window.  But they were an alright bunch, full of spirit and talking shit.  Chafiq asked me to supply 50 dirhams for a bottle of ma'hiya - mayim de hayim, water of life, a date liquor - and I skeptically agreed, and one was procured for us.

        Eventually we boarded, and began our five-hour journey to Essouaria.  I sat wedged on the side in the back.  Chafiq was next to me, sneaking cigarettes and regaling the entire back section, including a few of the bus station friends who had boarded with us, with what must have been bawdy stories, always centering around the word "Gnawa".  Watching the dusk begin to steal over the open expanses dotted by the occasional village, passing the bottle, I felt  exhilaration and freedom, the wind in my hair.  I was in a foreign place, hearing a foreign tongue spoken.  I had money in my pocket and I was in the beginning of an adventure.   It was good to be alive.

 

Continued on Next Page 

    Chapter 3: An Unexpected Companion

On a mission to find the gnawa, with all signs pointing to Essouaria, I checked out of my hostel and headed to the bus station, since that was the most direct way there.  The bus station, as are all bus stations in Morocco, was a vortex of chaos, full of people moving in all directions, carrying bags, or arguing, under seige by self-employed touts who offer unwanted assistance for every step of the process, and bus agencies competing to offer the timeliest departure- although their "schedules" are a work of crass falsity.

        Managing to purchase a ticket that seemed reasonable enough,  I was trying to load  my bags onto the bus when a tall, big, pale, sort of goofy looking guy stops me and holds his hand out asking  for 40 dirham  - each - to load my bags.  I give him 20, assuming that this, at least, is a legitimate charge and not just a scam.  Then this guy notices that I'm carrying an extremely dilapidated  guembri, a traditional stringed instrument made of wood and animal hide - the central instrument in Gnawa music.  For some reason practically every Moroccan guy I meet takes it out of my hands - no asking - and strums it.  It guembri seems to exert an almost magnetic fascination for the average Moroccan male - perhaps because it was so beat-up

        This guy does the same thing, only he's pretty good, a cut above the average guy.  He sings as he strums, and for the first time I hear real traditional Gnawa music and I realize that there's a good reason to be hunting this stuff down.  It's good mystical, reeking of the ancient world or later.  But this guy is, well, white.  It sort of weirds me out to hear music that sounds so African coming from a guy who looks like a pale-skinned Arab of the Levantine variety.   A small crowd gathers, semi-employed bus station guys like him, and they talk a lot of sh*t but it's clear they respect his talent.  He sort of mock-chastises them, points at the instrument and says something about Allah.  But this guy is no saint, you can tell that from a mile away.  He takes himself with a grain of salt..  Not necessarily a bad guy; but a wild card for sure.

        I get my instrument back, walk around a little and return to the area where my bus is supposed to leave.  The goofy-looking guy is there, sitting against the fence, smoking a spliff.  I sit down not too far from him, strum a little, start to kill time.  I'm on my own in Morocco.  There's plenty to think about.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

               He asks for the instrument again, we strike up a conversation.  Turns out his name is Chafiq, and he's twenty-five, like me.  He had learned to play from his father, who was also a gnawa.  He had died recently.  I didn't ask how long before.  Maybe this was his way of carrying on his legacy.  As he's telling me how he plays lots of gigs, how he studies with a real ma'alem, a master gnawa, just then one of his friends, passing by and overhearing our conversation, takes a card out of his wallet and shows it to me.  It was Chafiq's business card, with a picture of him singing and dressed up in traditional Gnawa costume.

        He offered me the spliff as he asked me a few questions about myself.  What I was doing, why I was going to Essouaria, what instrument did I play?   Did I drink?  Did I smoke?  Did I like sex cassettes? He liked sex cassettes.  "C'est bon!", he said.  Girls with girls.  Men with girls.  Men with men.  "C'est bon!" he said.  Me, not so much, I said, at least in regards to the latter.  I should have known right then and there that there was something fishy going on when he proposed accompanying me to Essouaria.  It will be fun, he said.  We'll drink, we'll smoke, we'll party like rock stars,  We'll get an apartment so we can play music all night..  I know my way around, he said.  Lots of Gnawa there he can introduce me to. We could even meet his ma'alem (master) right now, if I skipped the bus, and catch a later one.  What did I say to that?

        I wasn't sure.  I told him right off the bat that if he came along, I was going to pay for myself, and he for himself.  I figured I'd have to make sure I didn't leave him alone with my bags, just to be sure, but I figured if anything bad happened, I could handle myself.  I didn't mind the idea of having a guide.  And I liked the idea of meeting his ma'alem.  I basically put it as: it's up to you, guy.  He vacillated a bit, weighed it out.  "What about your job?", I asked.  Ah forget this job, he said.  I understood that his employment was far from official.

       The voice came over the loudspeaker.  The bus was leaving.  I got up, still assuming I was going to Essouaria, with or without this guy.  "Ok."  Chafiq rushed to the bus and, at the last possible moment, plucked my bags from the hold.  Looks like I was going to have some company.   We dropped my bags off at the consigne, and then the adventure really began.

       I tried to keep up with Chafiq as he led me on a rapid, twisting path.  We went deep into the Meddina, the old city, dodging people and carts.  I had barely scratched the surface of Marrakech's old city with my sister and wrote it off as a tourist trap.  But I hadn't seen this side of it.  It was like plunging into an old Brooklyn neighborhood, with children running around, bright colors and smells from stands hawking fruits and spices, the occasional donkey. I could feel the dense intertwining of lives, commerce and families, so radically different from mine in appearance but the essence of life does not change.  I could begin to feel that feeling,  the rush of adventure, the incredulous tingle of trying something new that you may never get to try again.

        After twenty minutes of walking through the Meddina, we entered a tiny corridor until we came upon a a tiny shop.  Inside the dim, cramped space there was barely enough room for a few chairs, an anvil, and a little alcove with a little sitting rug and bordered by a few shelves filled with spices.  There was no-one inside, but Chafiq instructed me to enter.  We sat and waited for a minute.  A few minutes of silence passed and we were joined by a third guy, a youngish squat guy with a white jacket and some kind of skin infection on his hand.  We waited in silence for a few minutes before  Chafiq excused himself for a moment to pick up his guembri from his home, He re-entered a few minutes later wearing his gnawa costume - a ridiculous outfit of baggy red pants, a black tunic, and yellow shoes, complete with a little tasselled cap, like the ones belonging to the "gnawa" in Jema Al Fna.  I was doing my best to pass off my laughter as delight when a tiny, wizened black man arrived at the door with a small plastic bag of groceries.

    Missing most of his teeth, and evidently quite tipsy, he shook my hand warmly.  He radiated a sort of happy, magnetic energy that made me feel instantly that I could trust and learn from him.  He sat down, nearly toppling over, and introductions were made, and soon Chafiq brought out his guembri - a pretty nice one, it seemed - and played and sung a little.  He passed it to Ma'alem, whose playing, even to my untrained ears, was clearly on another level from Chafiq's.  His playing felt... healing.  I could feel the knotted muscles in my shoulder beginning to soften, and felt the sometimes troubled waters of my soul become still and calm.  There is something about hearing amazing music in a foreign place which makes me so happy that I am willing to sacrifice anything to keep doing it.  I wished I hadn't left my recorder in my bag at the station.

.   After a while, my soul now filled to the brim, he passed the guembri back for Chafiq to play,  and the ma'alem played accompaniment on his knees.  Instantly falling into the rhythm, I joined in on my own knees, and the master and I experienced an incredible syncronicity, playing polyrhythms around the Chafiq's beat in total synchroncity with one another.  There was one moment where the ma'alem and I played four strokes, completely outside of the rhythm, precisely together - then stopped on cue to regard one another, me in astonishment, he in bemusement.

.       Afterwards, the guembri set to stand in the corner, the little man went into action, lighting a small gas burner, setting a ceramic tajine on it, chopping vegetables, adding a fish, and deftly peppering the mix with spices.  Something about him radiated, in his plain sweatshirt, sitting cross-legged in his little alcove, sprinkling spices, jabbering and laughing in Arabic.   Intercepting with a loud slap a maurauding fingertip from one of his young companions seeking to prematurely sample the sauce, he expressed his emotions quickly, openly, and without complications, moving right along to the next moment.  He had a rare quality that maybe Buddha or Jesus had...  He was particularly warm and kind with me, indulging my questions and complementing me for picking up the rhythm.