Biography
In 1969 an album titled Brian Jones Presents: The Master Musicians of Jajouka first brought the Master Musicians of Jajouka to widespread Western attention; it appeared a month before the drowning death of its producer, Rolling Stones guitarist Brian Jones. Successive generations of musicians’ sons formed the group, which later issued several memorable recordings under its own name and joined projects by Ornette Coleman, the Rolling Stones, Randy Weston, Maceo Parker, Jimmy Page, and Robert Plant. Bill Laswell produced the 1992 album Apocalypse Across the Sky.
Mick Jagger has called the ensemble “one of the most musically inspiring groups in the world.” The African Music Encyclopedia characterized its hypnotic sound as “a strange (at least to Western ears) combination of high-pitched, nasal, buzzing sounds (imagine a swarm of bees) with surging waves of rhythm which can induce an ecstatic trance state.” An exclusively male collective, the Master Musicians of Jajouka have maintained their distinctive, drone-heavy tradition for several thousand years, employing fifteen rhaita players and five drummers. Only a son of a master musician may become a master musician; the Arabic-speaking members adopt the surname Attar, meaning “the perfume maker.”
They continue to live in Jajouka, a small village in the Rif Mountains foothills. Largely unknown in the West for most of their history, the musicians were encountered in the 1950s by beat novelist William Burroughs and Paul Bowles, who recorded them for the Library of Congress. Painter, writer, and metaphysician Brion Gysin arranged Brian Jones’s introduction to the group. In the early 1990s Bachir Attar assumed leadership, succeeding his father who had directed the ensemble in the late 1960s. The Master Musicians of Jajouka undertook their first United States tour in 1997, which featured a reenactment of the week-long lunar feast Aid El Kabir. Sonic Youth guitarist Lee Ranaldo visited them in 1999. By the decade’s end the electronica community had embraced the group as well, with Talvin Singh producing the 2000 album The Master Musicians of Jajouka Featuring Bachir Attar.
Mick Jagger has called the ensemble “one of the most musically inspiring groups in the world.” The African Music Encyclopedia characterized its hypnotic sound as “a strange (at least to Western ears) combination of high-pitched, nasal, buzzing sounds (imagine a swarm of bees) with surging waves of rhythm which can induce an ecstatic trance state.” An exclusively male collective, the Master Musicians of Jajouka have maintained their distinctive, drone-heavy tradition for several thousand years, employing fifteen rhaita players and five drummers. Only a son of a master musician may become a master musician; the Arabic-speaking members adopt the surname Attar, meaning “the perfume maker.”
They continue to live in Jajouka, a small village in the Rif Mountains foothills. Largely unknown in the West for most of their history, the musicians were encountered in the 1950s by beat novelist William Burroughs and Paul Bowles, who recorded them for the Library of Congress. Painter, writer, and metaphysician Brion Gysin arranged Brian Jones’s introduction to the group. In the early 1990s Bachir Attar assumed leadership, succeeding his father who had directed the ensemble in the late 1960s. The Master Musicians of Jajouka undertook their first United States tour in 1997, which featured a reenactment of the week-long lunar feast Aid El Kabir. Sonic Youth guitarist Lee Ranaldo visited them in 1999. By the decade’s end the electronica community had embraced the group as well, with Talvin Singh producing the 2000 album The Master Musicians of Jajouka Featuring Bachir Attar.
Albums
Dancing Under the Moon
2022
Apocalypse Live
2017
Apocalypse Across The Sky
1992
The Master Musicians of Jajouka
1972
Brian Jones Presents The Pipes of Pan at Jajouka
1971
Live
