1

Your cart is empty.

**Orders may take up to a week before shipping, and mail carriers are experiencing delays. Your package may take longer than usual to arrive. We currently have local pickup available at our temporary shop at Eckhaus Latta Chinatown Los Angeles—just choose PICKUP at checkout! Thank you for your patience and support :)

Product Image Various Artists: Ecstatic Music of the Jemaa El Fna LP

Various Artists: Ecstatic Music of the Jemaa El Fna LP

The Jemaa El Fna is the classic bazaar or marketplace in the center of Marrakesh. It has been the go-to meeting center for centuries. At night, however, the musicians arrive in force, producing sounds from Gnawa-inspired ruminations on bass to modern popular chaabi. From a recording in 2005 that manages to capture the rawness of an evening or two of music (with car battery amplification, fuzzy speakers everywhere, ambient noises), a handful of pieces are presented here from three groups --Amal Saha, Troupe Majidi, and Mustapha Mahjoub (with a single track). The music is pounding, thrashing, jubilant all at once. The sound is exotic in its chord changes, but familiar as a bit of twisted sound related to those recordings of exotica that have been ravaged by time to a lower, tweaked fidelity. There are few ways to get sounds more authentic than nighttime concerts in a market, and there are relatively few such recordings better than this one. In terms of modern Moroccan music -- what contemporary Moroccans are actually listening to (not just fusion with Gnawa elements) -- this is perhaps one of the best and most finger-on-the-button albums out there.