Chapter IIAMBER
Chant Ecstatic
Joujouka, Gnawa trance and the Tangier counterculture
Showing all 015 works
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001
Plague Mass
Diamanda Galás
Her live album Plague Mass (1991) features material from her Masque of the Red Death trilogy, inspired by the AIDS crisis that claimed the life of her brother in 1986.
Live album 1991 Open ↗ YouTube -
002
Trance of Seven Colors
Maleem Mahmoud Guinia & Pharoah Sanders
In 1994, Laswell brought Pharaoh Sanders to Morocco to record with late Gnawa master Maleem Mahmoud Guinia for the Trance of Seven Colors album, and also instigated the Holy Black Gnawa Trance album in 2016 with Guinia’s brother Maleem Mokhtar Guinia.
Album 1994 Open ↗ YouTube -
003
Holy Black Gnawa Trance
Maleem Mokhtar Guinia
In 1994, Laswell brought Pharaoh Sanders to Morocco to record with late Gnawa master Maleem Mahmoud Guinia for the Trance of Seven Colors album, and also instigated the Holy Black Gnawa Trance album in 2016 with Guinia’s brother Maleem Mokhtar Guinia.
Album 2016 Open ↗ YouTube -
004
Marhaba
James Holden
Techno producer James Holden recently became enamoured with the trance-inducing potential of Gnawa, producing a record with Guinia in 2014 alongside Floating Points and, after his death in 2015, the Marhaba EP with Guinia’s son.
EP Open ↗ YouTube -
005
The Sheltering Sky
Paul Bowles
Bowles wrote his masterpiece The Sheltering Sky – a novel imbued with the hallucinatory splendour of North Africa – in the city in 1949, and went on to chronicle the mythology, surreal street life and magical underbelly of Morocco until his death in 1999.
Book 1949 Open ↗ Goodreads -
006
An American in Tangier
Paul Bowles
In the 1993 documentary An American in Tangier, Bowles described a magical pull: ‘I had based my sense of being in the world partly on an unreasoned conviction that certain areas of the Earth’s surface contained more magic than others … A hidden but direct passage that bypassed the mind.’
Documentary 1993 Open ↗ IMDb -
007
Naked Lunch
William S. Burroughs
Myriad accounts depict him holed up in the Hotel El Muniria writing Naked Lunch while eating balls of mahjoun hashish fudge, leaving to score smack or cruise the beach sweltering in a full suit under the midday sun, or taking tea at the Café du Paris among the retired double agents.
Book Open ↗ Goodreads -
008
The Process
Brion Gysin
Gysin, meanwhile, wrote the fundamental Moroccan-influenced countercultural novel – The Process – in 1969.
Book 1969 Open ↗ Goodreads -
009
Tales of Joujouka
Mohamed Hamri
Aside from painting (he painted Morocco in a modernist style, and exhibited all over the world), Hamri was also an enthusiastic chronicler of Joujouka folklore, writing Tales of Joujouka in 1975, which collated the stories and mythology of the village.
Book 1975 Open ↗ Goodreads -
010
A Night at the 1001
Brion Gysin
A Night at the 1001 – released by Sub Rosa in 2001 and compiled from tapes made by Gysin in the restaurant – captures a heady atmosphere of wild music and literature, complete with coughs, chinking glasses and table scrapes.
Album 2001 Open ↗ YouTube -
011
Nova Express
William S. Burroughs
The technique was then brought to wider underground consciousness by Burroughs with Naked Lunch and the Nova Express trilogy.
Book Open ↗ Goodreads -
012
The Third Mind
William S. Burroughs & Brion Gysin
The pair would later publish a working manifesto – The Third Mind – which introduced the procedure as the hidden hand of chance working as creative catalyst.
Book Open ↗ Goodreads -
013
Brian Jones Presents the Pipes of Pan at Joujouka
Brian Jones
The album he recorded in Joujouka – Brian Jones Presents the Pipes of Pan at Joujouka – was released two years later in 1971.
Album 1971 Open ↗ YouTube -
014
Jail Notes
Timothy Leary
After the Pan album, other visitors came and went – most notably Timothy Leary, who wrote of his experiences in Jail Notes, and Ornette Coleman, who recorded the frenetic, maddening ‘Midnight Sunrise’ with the Masters for Dancing in Your Head (1977).
Book Open ↗ Goodreads -
015
Dancing in Your Head
Ornette Coleman
After the Pan album, other visitors came and went – most notably Timothy Leary, who wrote of his experiences in Jail Notes, and Ornette Coleman, who recorded the frenetic, maddening ‘Midnight Sunrise’ with the Masters for Dancing in Your Head (1977).
Album 1977 Open ↗ YouTube
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