The ’4000 Year Old Rock ’n’ Roll Band’

*In a remote village in the Ahl Srif tribal area of Northern Morocco, dwell a collective of Sufi musicians. They play a form of trance music which is used for healing.  Timothy Leary called them The 4,000-year-old Rock’N’Roll band - rather superficial hyperbole perhaps - though it is true that what The Master Musicians of Joujouka play is thousands of years old - and shares something in common with the wildest and most inspired of  rock music.

 

Record producer, film-maker and Beat historian Frank Rynne, who co-organises their annual festival,  came to the Bureau to tell the strange and wonderful story of the musicians of Joujouka, their culture and their interaction with the counterculture of the 50s and 60s

 

We hear about Tangier at the time - and the life there of Beat artists Bryon Gysin and William Burroughs with digressions into the dark side of bohemia - along with the story of doomed Rolling Stone Brian Jones who came to record the Master Musicians shortly before his death.

 

For more on the Master Musicians of Jojouka

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