Jajouka Rec. 
The Master Musicians of Jajouka with Bachir Attar :
Live vol 1 (MO,rec.2007,pub.2008)*°°
To a degree I cannot stand lots of the so called pure traditional music, because it not always shows the best creative solutions even when there are always elements of it involved, but without adaptation to what is needed on the moment it still is possible that lazy and repetitive patterns are part of it, or even worse, because traditions in general are able not only to show the creativity of man, but also could involve some stubborn maintenance of foolishness of man of local costumes that should have found better solutions for a changed environments and knowledge by now.*
* Superstition and misunderstandings stimulated by bad former habits are able to create even more foolish habits. For instance, just imagine that someone is married to a niece after having bought her in a family affair, then the man discovers her genitals doesn't’ look like a simple cut, but are pressed a bit to the outside, he is so scared to see they look a bit like male genitals (hanging out), he convinces the elder of the village to cut all women’s genitals from now on from a very young age into the shape they are expected to be. This looks foolish to us, but millions of girls are circumcised with a simple knife every year all over the world. Rationalise this as much as you can, but this is a stupid tradition caused by foolishness. This means that there also exist also many traditions that are maintaining some stupidity which show no respect or openness to better ideas, to evolution, to freedom, or to the energy of the NOW, for what is really needed.
Some aspects from other cultures can feel aggressive, even the use of a language (like local Arabic for us, it often sounds like a combination of spitting and puking when we hear it being spoken by someone full of frustration and hate, the sounds we don’t like become worse ; after Hitler and Goebbles many people began to hate German, while it could be such a soft language too, just like Arabic is able to show that aspect too). The context first of all remains important. But certain aspects in a Western society means something else in the forests or in the desert and the other way around. We can handle certain worse habits without it hurting society or personality too much, people must get a chance to develop, and certain freedoms are like a culturally inclined trust, in other cultures where they forbid these as taboos, in fact they also do not develop such a condition of trust. But it is dangerous to judge on any other’s culture censorship or freedom. Often it was for them the best solution for certain results. In a different context the opposite might have been more practical, but not for now. In each tradition we must first understand why, and only then think about it that it still is a practical solution or not. So, if this is allowed, we then need our own creativity to understand certain contexts. Some of it is localised, the most important qualities are those qualities that work anywhere. -Universally in the human context- (Naming anything religious instead of a local habit does not make it universal).
Despite all that some aspects of costumes of different communities could be sensed as being negative when taken out of the context and not fully understood, because each culture also has a wide range of contrasts that place different aspects to/of each other. If we for instance take out the context, the irrationally sharp and disharmonious, yes awful sounds of the Middle Eastern clarinet, or Scottish bagpipes, or certain use of trumpet, -personally I would prefer a listening evening to demonstrate all sorts of vacuum cleaners-, some aspect of it might be conditioned by local costumes, but there might also be something else behind the existence of it. The rhaita for instance in the beginning of such a Sufi performance could symbolise something like a siren of discomfort, of demanding all attention, like an alarm clock does, hypnotically combining all disorganisation, before the healing process begins. I can understand, but why does it take so many minutes ? It raises my hairs like snakes from a casket.
When I then heard Mick Jagger say (what does he know about creative music?) he finds Jajouka inspiring music, at this point I still have no idea why he is saying so. But then after the Arab intro, the reed pipe-like wake-me-up-Scotty, primitive tamtams which gave me a hard time to survive in the awful mourning monotonousness, after the fourth(!) track they luckily changed channel and instruments, to flute leads. One flute is used to produce a droning tone, another one improvises a bit. It is nice but also takes forever. Then a small change brings in a percussion instrument with a droning string attached to it. The lead flute becomes more happy and celebrative. From then on the combination of this string attached percussion with the flute was transformed into a whole different energy, building up a tension. Only from here on I can understand the “healing music” aspect as they say to be able to form. There’s a celebrative, hypnotic aspect in it too, with now more complex rhythms. The group adds singing too. This repeats itself in a rather hypnotic way. The tension increases a trance effect, which in fact isn’t too different from the sort of Trance which is induced with complex rhythmic repetitions in lots of African music, with the addition of lead call and response.
Other instruments heard were the Jajouka flute called the lira, the oldest instrument in Jajouka. The drum is called the tebel and is made of goat-skin and played with two wooden sticks. There is also another goat-skin drum called the tarija which allows for more fast-paced virtuosity.
