Dancing Under the Moon

Cosmic, gargantuan, ecstatic and best played very, very loud, the Master Musicians of Jajouka need little introduction. Since Beat writers William Burroughs and Brion Gysin ‘discovered’ them for Western ears and eyes, many have followed – from Brian Jones and the Rolling Stones through Ornette Coleman, Bill Laswell, even that late bodymorphic instigator of chaos, Genesis P-Orridge.

This lengthy set – only one of Dancing Under the Moon’s nine tracks clocks in at under ten minutes – comes from an intensive week of recordings made by Jacopo Andreini, who in November 2019 was invited by the leader of the Master Musicians, Bachir Attar, to record the complete Jajouka repertoire. Supervised by Bachir, Andreini recorded hours and hours of music over the course of a week, capturing performances that encompass Jajouka’s varied styles – from the ear-splitting double-reed ghaita that once flooded through Morocco’s royal court, to the fiddle-based jabaliya, or mountain music, descended from the ancient Andalusian melodies of Moorish Iberia. This is expansive and immersive and a welcome addition to the Jajouka catalogue. Amid the double reeds, the quiet, otherworldly ‘The Bird Prays for Allah’ rises like dawn over an oasis. The one caveat is that some detailed track notes would’ve been a welcome addition.