We’ve written about some pretty exclusive music festival and music festival packages here at Tone Deaf. Earlier this month, we detailed the ridiculously extravagant Ultimate Festival Passes package for Secret Solstice in Reykjavik, Iceland.
The $200,000 VIP package features such luxuries as first class return flights from anywhere on the planet for two people, a luxury five-bedroom villa in Reykjavík for five nights, and helicopter transfers almost everywhere, including to a private experience at the famed Blue Lagoon.
We’ve also written about some more moderately priced but still lush music festival experiences, such as Parklife’s infamous ‘Ridiculously Expensive Ticket’ to their 2011 event, which ran punters $7,000 and included such perks as a personal drinks caddie and slip-and-slide festival entry.
However, these pale in comparison to the world’s oldest and most exclusive music festival, which takes place annually, high in the southern Rif mountains of northern Morocco. There’s no lineup announcement or viral marketing campaign, but it’s the most coveted music festival experience in the world.
It’s known as the Master Musicians of Joujouka “micro” music festival. Held in the isolated Ahl Srif region of Morocco’s Rif Mountains, it’s become a destination event for impassioned fans around the world. Well, those who know about it, anyway.
Arguably the world’s most exclusive music festival, tickets are capped at just 50, with many fans returning annually. They come to witness the tribal trance sounds made by the village’s 15 or 20 master musicians, who perform in the tribe’s traditional musical style.
While the gathering is now frequently whispered about between travellers and world music aficionados, until the 1950s, almost no one in the world new about the Master Musicians of Joujouka. It was writer Paul Bowles and Canadian artist Brion Gysin who brought the event to world renown after stumbling upon it by chance.
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As Rolling Stone notes, Gysin and Hamri introduced the MMJ to their circle of friends, which included the likes of countercultural icons like Timothy Leary, William Burroughs and other members of the American Beat Generation, as well as The Rolling Stones, which then included guitarist Brian Jones.
Jones became so enamoured with the musicians that he produced their first album, Brian Jones Presents the Pipes of Pan, shortly before his death in 1969. It’s said that Burroughs described the MMJ as “a 4,000-year-old rock & roll band”.
Since then, the musicians have gone on to record with legendary jazz saxophonist Ornette Coleman, as well as playing a slot at England’s famous Glastonbury Festival and elsewhere on a wild three-month tour in the 1980s. More albums and tours followed, as well as the renown of their annual gathering.
“The festival began to give the Master Musicians of Joujouka a voice and a place where they could show people that they were truly the masters of their village and their music,” said Frank Rynne, who acts as the group’s organiser and manager.
“For their own community, it shows the younger generation that there is a future in the music, as each year people come from across the world and show devotion to their parents’ playing, culture and hospitality. And they want it to continue. They feel this music in their hearts; it’s in their blood.”
According to Rolling Stone‘s Suzanne Gerber, who witnessed the most recent event, the festival, which runs AUD$523.09 per ticket, lasts three days and begins before midnight each night.
“Just before midnight, a buzz begins to radiate through the groups of sprawled attendees decked out in colorful robes, hippie skirts and flowing Western clothes,” she writes.
“Wordlessly we edge up from supine to seated, and rearrange ourselves in casual semicircles, all eyes on the 13 men in ceremonial brown djellabas parading up the front of the stage, which is to say the carpeted chill-out area of a three-sided tent done up in red and green tribal fabric.”
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“Horn squeals and drum taps puncture the silence, come faster and gradually knit into melody and rhythm. A yowl of high-pitched ghaita horns pierces the air, reverberating from every direction, despite the lack of walls. Five different kinds of drums thunder into a rhythm, then syncopate and alternate, creating layers of polyrhythms.”
“Almost involuntarily, people make their way to their feet and begin dancing to the pounding drums, the energy among the audience escalating until it’s reached the same fever pitch as the players’. And just when it seems like the music is reaching a climax, rhythms change, horns shift gears and the tsunami of sound starts to recede and slowly build all over again.”
“This continues for a couple hours, until just like that, the music stops. Dancers inch their way to their spots on the carpet as the musicians, still glued to their chairs, ritualistically refill their spindly wooden Sebsi pipes and smile beatifically at one other and at the audience, who are flashing Cheshire cat grins right back at them.”
During the day, musicians gather together on the porch of the main communal building to play their ancient songs, continually improvising on them in impromptu jam sessions. Kids come by to dance, as the festival attendees make their way over to mingle.
“If you need a schedule, all-day entertainment, predictable mealtimes, a soft bed, Western plumbing and other creature comforts, go elsewhere. Joujouka is more like an anti–music festival. There are no announcements, no planned show times, no clear sense of anything,” writes Gerber.
“Once it started it can’t be stopped,” says Rynne, of the festival. “Each year is unique, a different set of people, a new energy, and the Masters feed off that. By organizing the festival, I get to hear three days of the greatest trance music played live, and no two performances are the same.”
