Joujouka

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For the Japanese Psychedelic band, see Joujouka

Cover of Hamri's Tales of JoujoukaCapra Press 1975 showing Boujeloud/Pan in Joujouka

Joujouka (or Jajouka) is a village in the Ahl-Srif mountains in the southern Rif. The mountains are named after the Ahl-Srif tribe who populate the region.

1 The musical heritage
2 Life
3 Sources
4 See also
5 External links

[edit] The musical heritage

Joujouka is well known as it is home to the Sufi trance musicians The Master Musicians of Joujouka.The village attracted the attention of beat generation writers Paul Bowles and William Burroughs in the 1950s because the Sufi trance musicians there appeared to still worship the god Pan. Brion Gysin who had been introduced to the Master Musicians by Mohamed Hamri propagated this idea. He linked the village's Boujeloud festival, where a boy sewn in goat skins danced with sticks while the musicians play to keep him at bay, to the ancient "Rites of Pan". In 1967 and 1968 Brian Jones lead guitarist with The Rolling Stones visited the village and on his final stay recorded the Masters for the LP Brian Jones presents the Pipes of Pan at Joujouka. The LP was released in 1971, some two years after Jones' death, on Rolling Stones Records. The release brought an influx of westerners some like Ornette Coleman and Bill Laswell recorded there.

The Masters who live there play the Sufi trance music handed down through generations. Leader of the group was for many years Hadj Abdessalam Attar, who died in 1982. His son, Bachir Attar, claimed the leadership but his attempt is surrounded in controversy. .

[edit] Life

oven for baking bread in Joujouka 2003

Subsistence farming is the main activity of most Joujouki. The main crops are olives, tillage of vegetables such as carrots, turnips, potatoes, and the raising of sheep who are grazed out on common land. Poultry are raised by the women and provide eggs which are a valued source of protein. In the summer shepard boys bring the herds to the higher slopes. They can be heard practicing on bamboo flutes from miles away. The livestock, chickens and high quality olive oil provide a cash element in this economy. There is also small scale honey production by some enterprising villagers. In recent years, electricity has arrived in the village and there is a passable road which has reduced the cost of transporting essential goods to the village. The cost of transportation had previously made many items unavailable locally, or alternativly, prohibitively expensive to the villagers. The Ahl Srif was also an area where kif (marijuana) was grown but its cultivation has been recently prohibited. However, there seems to be no alternative cash crop for those who had depended on it in the past.

[edit] Sources

Gysin, Brion, Wilson, Terry, Here to Go Planet R 101 revisited , (Ouartet, London 1982) ISBN 0-7043-2544-6 p; 29, p. 30, pp.33-4, p.76. for Pan/Joujouka, Mohamed Hamri, "Tales of Joujouka", Santa Barbara, 1975; Stephen Davis: Jajouka Rolling Stone.