Master Musicians of Joujouka
Official website of the legendary Sufi brotherhood Master Musicians of Joujouka from Joujouka/Jajouka, Morocco.
Mohamed Hamri - Obituary in The Independent (London)
By Frank Rynne
The Independent (London), October 19, 2000, Thursday.
OBITUARIES; Pg. 6
“IN MY life I have been through many doors,” the Moroccan painter Hamri once said. Cook, smuggler, and mentor of the Master Musicians of Joujouka, Hamri was the only Moroccan intellectual to participate in the activities of the Tangier beat generation and to deal with them on their own level. He is immortalised in The Spider’s House (1957) by Paul Bowles, Burroughs called him a “phoney primitive” in Interzone (1989), and Timothy Leary dubbed him “the Napoleon of Painting” in Jail Notes (1970).
From a family of ceramic artists, Hamri spent his childhood escaping alternately to the ascetic pleasures of the mountain village of Joujouka or to the louche attractions of the city of Tangier. In Joujouka he would stay with his uncle, the leader of the Master Musicians of Joujouka, Rif Sufis, whose rituals resemble the rites of Pan. In Tangier he was famous as the “king of the trains”, smuggling contraband between the International Zone and the outer territories. When not smuggling, the young Hamri was sketching and drawing in the Tangier train station. Paul Bowles picked him up there and brought him home.
Bowles bought him paints and drew his attention to Western painters, but held Hamri captive in his apartment. Unhappy with this oppression, the boy borrowed the suit in which Bowles had in 1938 married the writer Jane Auer, and escaped to the Rif mountains. Weeks celebrating his freedom wrecked the suit so, the next time he visited Tangier, he sent it off to be repaired. He then tried to sell it to a rich American in the Cafe Central.
The American asked him where he had got the garment. Hamri explained how Bowles had locked him up. “I’ve known Paul Bowles for years!” said the man – it was the painter Brion Gysin, whom Hamri later introduced to William Burroughs. Gysin would prove invaluable to Burroughs, developing the “cut up” method of writing with him. Gysin altered Hamri’s life in a fundamental way, and vice versa. Hamri brought him to Joujouka and Gysin devoted himself wholeheartedly to promoting the village’s raggle-taggle of percussionists and pipe players.
In 1952 Gysin and Hamri opened a restaurant in Tangier, 1001 Nights, where the Master Musicians played, brought down in shifts from the Rif. Guests at the 1001 Nights included Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, the Rolling Stones and the gangsters of the Interzone.
The Stones’ guitarist, Brian Jones, falling apart in Morocco, met up with Gysin and Hamri in 1968. Hamri brought him to Joujouka since the music was said to heal crazy minds. Jones immortalised Joujouka through the iconic 1971 album Brian Jones Presents the Pipes of Pan at Joujouka which features lavish artwork by Hamri.
Hamri’s early paintings contained stark black lines forging strange primordial creatures but the mature painter used exploding colours which justified Burroughs’s claim that “the djnounn forces of Morocco ripple and frolic through the paintings of Hamri”. From the barrios of Marrakesh to the gilded palaces of Casablanca, his vision of Morocco became a dominant cultural voice.
In 1992 the artist and writer Joe Ambrose and me invited Hamri to a Dublin Interzone festival. He brought the Master Musicians with him and Irish painters, musicians, and writers encountered his untrammelled spirit. Joe Ambrose received a series of faxes claiming that Hamri was an impostor. Paul Bowles had contacted Burroughs, who was backing the event, and told him that Hamri was a fake. Burroughs replied: “People have accused Hamri of being many things but nobody has ever accused him of being a fake. Hamri is the real thing.”
Hamri’s legacy was challenged by a pop version of Joujouka, supported by the American musicians Philip Glass and Sonic Youth. Their premise was that Hamri had nothing to do with formulating the music or bringing Brian Jones to Joujouka. Glass organised a controversial reissue of Pipes of Pan, which did away with Hamri’s cover artwork.
Hamri led an international protest campaign, doing serious damage to Glass’s reputation, but considerable collateral damage to himself. He was the victim of a vicious knife attack in his home at Joujouka in 1997. This sent him into a spiritual and physical decline. On the day of his death Radio 4 broadcast a documentary acknowledging him as the inspiration behind Joujouka.
On my first visit to him in 1994, we catalogued the songs and playing styles of generations of Joujouka musicians. The resulting CD, Joujouka Black Eyes, released the following year, features Hamri’s song “Brian Jones Joujouka Very Stoned”. This song extolled the beauty of the village and chronicled the visit of the Rolling Stone to Joujouka. Hamri stressed that an important spiritual message was at the core of the music. He hated to dwell on the negative.
Mohamed Hamri, artist and musician: born Ksar El Kebir, Morocco 27 August 1932; married (one son, two daughters); died Joujouka 29 August 2000.
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