Sufi Sounds in Global Pop: the Master Musicians of Jajouka Led by Bachir Attar and Youssou N’Dour with the Super Étoile De Dakar
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Sufi Sounds in Global Pop: The Master Musicians of Jajouka led by Bachir Attar and Youssou N’Dour with the Super Étoile de Dakar By Chuen-fung Wong World music audience over the past half a century or so have and featured prominently in the ensemble. The most commonly witnessed the proliferation of global pop genres that style used chordophone is the gimbri, a half-spike plucked lute normally themselves as proud inheritors of centuries-old indigenous with three or four strings; it is also found in Gnawa music and ritual traditions. Part of what this amounts to is the transnational some other North African genres. The violin, held upside down circulation of sacred sounds and music, connecting among diverse and resting on the lap, may be added to provide a bowed string JEMXLWERHFIPMIJW]WXIQWEGVSWWXLI[SVPH7Y½WQEQ]WXMG-WPEQMG timbre. Finally, a double goat-skinned drum known as the tebel, tradition practiced widely across traditional societies in Central which appears in various sizes and played with a pair of sticks Asia, the Middle East, North Africa, and other parts of the world, or hands, adds a rhythmic edge to articulate the melodies. Oral represents a major creative impulse and source of inspiration in sources of history recount that Jajouka musicians were traditionally contemporary world music. The Sufis embrace musical, poetic, patronized by the sultans to perform healing rituals. Today their and choreographic performances as spiritual paths through which music and dance remain associated ritually with an annual week- practitioners seek reunion with the god. Devotional sounds are long festival that worships Pan, the ancient Greek god known central to Sufi rituals. The Sufis’ musical dedication to Islamic locally as Boujeloud, a half-human, half-goat deity whose spirit is to worship – which is frequently set apart from orthodox, extreme be summoned through trance performance at the ceremony. MRXIVTVIXEXMSRWSJXLI5YV´âERERH,EHâÒXL[LIVIQYWMGQEOMRK The hypnotic music of the Master Musicians of Jajouka was of all kinds is indiscriminately banned – has also put some of the brought to the attention of the outside world through a number Sufi styles and genres on the map of contemporary global pop. of ‘discoveries’ by some high-profile Euro-American visitors, 'IVXEMR7YJMKIRVIWWYGLEWXLI4EOMWXERM7SYXL%WMERUE[[âEPâÒ including the writers Paul Bowles (1910–1999) and William S. the Moroccan/North African gnawa, and the ceremonial music of Burroughs (1914–1997) as well as the artist Brion Gysin (1916– the Turkish Mevlevi whirling dervishes have enjoyed wide global 1986) in the 1950s. Later it was the Rolling Stones’ guitarist Brian circulation and enormous popularity. Jones – producer of the widely popular album Brian Jones Presents To this list we should also add the ecstatic performance of the the Pipes of Pan at Jajouka – who introduced the Jajouka musicians highland Jbala people from northwest Morocco, as made famous to the broader outside world. More recently, the released of by the internationally acclaimed Master Musicians of Jajouka. The XLIMV½VWXMRXIVREXMSREPEPFYQJoujouka Black Eyes as well as their small hilltop village named Jajouka, from where the musicians came, debut at the WOMAD (World of Music, Arts and Dance) Festival, is located in the south of the Rif Mountains, a two-hour drive or both in the mid-1990s, brought the group squarely onto the train-ride from Tangier. The immediate sonic appeal of the group contemporary world music scene. Today, the Master Musicians comes from its signature piercing wail performed on the ghaita, a of Jajouka is led by Bachir Attar (b.1964), who inherited the double-reed aerophone that is a close sibling of the Arab mizmar leadership of the group from his father Hadj Abdesalam Attar as well as the zurna or surnay found in Turkey and the Turkic (who ran the group when they recorded with Brian Jones in Central Asia. The ghaita appears both as a solo instrument that the late 1960s). It continues to be one of the most sought-after carries the melody and also as an accompanying instrument that performing groups in the contemporary world music scene. supplies the drone in the background. Either way, it plays unbroken phrases through the technique of circular breathing, recreating the transnational Sufi devotional ritual known as zikr (dhikr), or the naming of god, where short lines of prayers are repeatedly recited SVWYRKWMPIRXP]SVEPSYH8SXLI7Y½WXLIEGXSJPMWXIRMRKXSVMXYEP music is itself a crucial means of attaining the divine state of trance, a quintessential pathway to reuniting with the god. Other Jajouka instruments include the lira, a vertical flute made of bamboo or cane commonly found in Morocco. The lira is considered one of the oldest musical instruments in the tradition © Cherie Nutting 12 7Y½MR¾YIRGIWMRXLIQYWMGSJXLI(EOEVFSVR7IRIKEPIWI[SVPH and synthesized dance sound in his early styles, and has received music superstar Youssou N’Dour (b.1959) came less as literal wide acclaim around the world; it won a Grammy Award for the evocations of some trance-inducing ritual soundscapes, and more Best Contemporary World Music Album in 2005. What Youssou as an aspiration and heritage that seek not to escape the mundane celebrated in his songs here is an amalgamation – or bridging– world but to engage it in order to inspire social changes. Youssou’s of his African griot identity and his Islamic faith (a theme he had mother came from the well-known West African tradition of poet not discussed openly in previous projects). As Youssou puts it musicians known as griots, a hereditary class of praise singers in a 2009 interview, “We, coming from West Africa, Senegal, we who assume the role of storytellers and oral historians. The social are black, Africans. Yes, we are also Muslim, and the label, ‘We commentaries frequently found in Youssou’s lyrics – interpreted are Muslim’ is the strong one.” Perhaps more importantly, the with the impressively broad range of his soaring voice – have songs on the album represent a pluralistic vision for broader been heard as perpetuation of this centuries-old griot tradition. In understanding and greater tolerance in Islam and across different his songs, Youssou sings about the ideal of a pan-African identity, JEMXLW8S=SYWWSYERHQER]MRLMWEYHMIRGIXSHE]XLIWTMVMXSJ7Y½ solidarity with the anti-apartheid movement, environmental issues, music lies not in its evocation of the distant, ahistorical past. It is 7Y½WQERH-WPEQMGTVEGXMGIWMRIUYEPMXMIWERHXLITVSFPIQWJEGIHF] the present moment, in which so much has been divided across urban migrants, as well as ancestors and heritage. He was named a VIPMKMSYWREXMSREPERHIXLRMGPMRIWXLEXLMWWSRKW½RHXLIWXVSRKIWX UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador in 1991, and has assumed multiple resonance and the most powerful relevance. roles in social advocacy. -RQER]MQTSVXERX[E]WXLI7Y½WIRWMFMPMXMIWWSGSPSVJYPP]PE]IVIH Among the most famous African musicians alive, Youssou is in the music of both the Jajouka musicians and Youssou N’Dour credited today as a pioneer of African pop: he was among the (and his group) speak no longer to the vernacular sect that was first to blend local musical genres and instruments with Afro- once at the periphery of the Islamic world. These global pop Cuban and other African diasporic styles from the Caribbean. musicians and the mesmerizing, Sufi-inspired soundscapes they The outcome is a uniquely urban Senegalese pop genre known created are increasingly part of an emerging global musical faith, as mbalax, which, sung primarily in the Wolof language, Senegal’s whose membership is perhaps as inclusive as the styles and lingua franca, features highly ornamented vocal styles and sounds being represented, sampled, and appropriated. What sophisticated percussion forms borrowed from Wolof traditions, UYEPM½IWEW7Y½QYWMGXSHE]MWEWQYGLEREIWXLIXMGUYIWXMSREWMX unfolded against a primarily Latin jazz backdrop. Altogether the is a historical and religious one. It is true that the late 20th-century mbalax style reminds its audience of the Congolese soukous and TSTYPEVMX]SJ7Y½WX]PIWMRXLI[SVPHQYWMGQEVOIXTPEGILEWFSXL a few other African pop genres created since the 1960s. In the revived these centuries-old mystical traditions and diminished late 1970s, Youssou formed the Étoile de Dakar, a Senegalese their ritual functions, exposing the sound to the broader audience pop band that became the genre’s de facto spokesperson both while also extracting it out of the original context. It is also domestically and internationally. The group was renamed the Super true that these Sufi-styled global pop songs have blurred the Étoile de Dakar in the early 1980s in an effort to further Africanize differences between the sacred and the secular, the private and its sound by adding more polyrhythmic lines and assigning more the public. Yet what musicians such as Youssou N’Dour and the rhythmic roles to the enlarged instrumentation. Jajouka masters have achieved is the creation musical space that invites pluralist devotional pursuits and spiritual journeys across A devout Sufi, Youssou embarked on a musical journey that ethnicities and other premodern boundaries. It is in this sense that delved into his Islamic faith with the 2004 album titled Egypt. The the Master Musicians of Jajouka as well as Youssou N’Dour and his project highlights the cultural continuities between North Africa Super Étoile de Dakar continue to enchant their devoted global and West Africa by involving the Fathy Salama Orchestra from audiences. Egypt and a range of Arab styles, musical forms,