Essaouira Gnawa Music Festival
Yeah. So it’s been four days since I’ve written but it feels like forever. The festival has been a cauldron of people and music and missioning through crowds and incredible music mixed with cheesy music mixed with high energy dancing with people and snatches of sleep and grabbing bites on the go and home-cooked meals.
Intense. Fucking intense.
So during the festival I was looking for something surreal to beat the Moroccan rasta freestyling in Arabic from my first night in this town. Rachid Taha, the Algerian rock star that looks like he is one of the Rolling Stones was a contender, but then the reggae/heavy metal group (yes – heavy metal and reggae don’t seem like to opposites to this band) at a 4am sunrise was definitely more arb. But the winner will have to be the light coloured camels carrying people along the water’s edge at night past us listening to Moroccan hip hop on the beach. The white skins shining from the lights of the beach against the dark sea and sky will have to be some of the surrealist shit ever. Ever.
To give you some idea of what the festival schedule was, the concerts start at about 3pm at the smaller venues and going till 8pm. The larger venues start from about 7pm till midnight when the small venues start again till about 3h30am (fajr). After that the crowds drift off to the beach (which started at 8pm) where the last show starts at 3am and carries on till about 5am. That’s when I would usually try and get some shut eye.
In between I also spent half a day with some really cool guys from Essaouira – swimming, braaing (grilling) sardines, drinking tea – on the rocks next to the bastions behind the port. Good times, good people.
Now I need to rest. Staying in Essaouira one day longer than I thought because all the easy ways of leaving (i.e. Supratour or CTM busses) are full and I don’t smaak to mission plus I might get in a longboard surf tomorrow.
Tags: Morocco, Travel, Tag Index
Ghalied
June 28th, 2006 at 9:28 pm
Hey Jabs, it’s Maya here*wow this sounds so awesome:) how do I get to your flickr account, the pictures I saw so far are stunning.
If it happens that Weaam them make it up to Morocco in September insha Allah , I’ll try to join in, too:)
Wishing you lots of fun!
June 29th, 2006 at 1:49 pm
You can try http://www.flickr.com/photos/gdotphotos/ for my pics. There aren’t many because its a mission to do it in an internet cafe and also because I don’t take that many in the first place.
Keep me updated on your plans though, it’ll be cool to liaise at some point. Germany must be abuzz with the World Cup.
June 29th, 2006 at 2:32 pm
GW- When is Magrieb there in Morocco I see that Fajr is at the time when most of us are very much in dreamland – as mens op jou lekkerste slaap.
The weather back home isnt to shabby for winter its been rather summery at times and today feels like a 20 something degree day.
Are there big differences between Moroccan Arabic versus what the Egyptians speak??
Your articles are interesting keep feeding them to us. I’ll try my level best to respond (depending work load) Do you still remember this word called “Workload” – the toad on my wall says “Probably not”.
Wish I was Maya…. Ich werde mal auch in deutschland fur den Weltmeisterschaft sein aber leider bin ich nicht so gluecklich.
Take Care
Waleed
June 29th, 2006 at 2:39 pm
Magrieb is at 19h47, Eshaai 21h20, Fajr 3h30. Moroccan Arabic is almost a language on its own – I’m learning very little because I keep getting French and other languages thrown at me as well.
June 30th, 2006 at 4:00 pm
Yoh Today is another summery day o’er here. Its just a couple of minutes before tchaaila time for me I hope to leave the office at 16h10 today. Need to get home to watch some good footie Arg vs Ger. There is a good lecture on at UCT tonight at 8pm presented by Dr Quick on the Revival of the Call to Islam in the 21 Century at the Leslie. Will have to squeeze that one into an already hectic weekend.
Just wondering,,, find it strange why they would throw French at you? Whats interesting for me is how the Moroccans have concockted their own flavour of Arabic. I guess it must be simular to what happens to the Afrikaans language as you travel through our land. Lanaguage certainly is a living thing and will change as peoples habbits change etc.
The solaah times are exactly what we would have during the heart of summer in January. How do you find the mosques in the area? I’m sure they must be very old. Speaking of which I bumped into Ebrahim that use to sit with Justin Kruger (exPNP colleague) at Islamia mosque today. The lecture dealt with how we waste time on this doenyah. E.g. Over a 45year period if one person watched 3 hours of telly everyday that would amount to 6years of non stop watching. Frightening stuff yoh!
Anyways on a less morbit note have a lekker weekend.
WA
PS: Have you sorted yourself with a job yet?