June 30th & 31st
The rest of the weekend in Essaouira was wonderful. Our very first night, we ate in a hip Moroccan restaurant that was well decorated but completely empty. We were the only two customers there. It was a little disconcerting given the huge number of people in town for the festival. The Israeli owner was eating at another table with a friend, speaking really loudly in very bad French. She was very unusual looking, with a puffy white face like Pillsbury dough and short, blond braids. When I went to use the bathroom for the second time, I had to cross the inner courtyard in front of her and open the unmarked wooden door to use the toilet. As I walked away, I closed the door gently behind me. As Stephanie and I started to leave, the women asked me in English, in a heavy accent, "Why don't you close the door behind you?" I begged her pardon, and confused, I looked around. The door had indeed swung open again. I apologized, saying that I hadn't realized it was still open. "Go close it now." I looked at her for a second, then turned around and did exactly as I was asked. She didn't thank me. As we left, I wished that I had refused. What made her think that I left the door open on purpose? Why did she think that she could talk to me like that? And most importantly, why did it matter that the door was open? If anyone else had eaten dinner there that night, they would have known, thanks to the open door, exactly where the bathroom was. Was she rude because I was clearly American or because I was young? At least the food was good.
Playing dress-up in a jewelry shop
The actual festival didn't start until dark when several performances, traditional and non, were taking place at multiple venues around the medina. Gnaoua music originates in southern Morocco, created by descendants of black slaves brought to work in the leather-dying and tanning industries. It's clean and spiritual, as sparse and complex as the desert. Traditionally, the singer only uses his guitar, castanet-like instrument and his voice to create complex melodies that are at once mellow, joyful, energetic and even trance-like. You can dance to it several different ways, all in order to produce a spiritual trance. It's also associated with reggae music randomly…there are a lot of bands that do fusion between the two.
We just wandered through the crowds, stumbling upon a huge stage or a small courtyard full of music every once in a while. Friday night, the streets were packed. We stopped to watch a group perform traditional Moroccan music on a huge stage. All of the musicians were men dressed in long red djellabas. There was a line of men dancing, side by side, performing a shuffling step, shrugging their shoulders and letting their arms dangle. One man broke away from the line, grabbed an enormous brass pot, hefted it over his head and started swaying and swirling with it balanced on his head. (Video quality is nothing special--I recorded these on my digital camera)
At another stage, another group was playing traditional gnaoua music. This time, it was improvised percussive music. Most of the musicians were black and wore little hats, similar to fez, but with several long strands of black cord, decorated with cowrie shells. To the left stood a drummer, beating a huge tbel strapped to his chest. The rest were furiously clapping krakeb or giant metal castanets. Triplets, sixteenth notes, their hands were a blur. One by one, they stepped out of line and spun around like tops, crouching and standing, the cords on their hats flying. As a finale, the drummer went last and beat out a frenzied rhythm as he spun and spun.
On Saturday, Stephanie and I hit the shops hard. I got a leather belt and Stephanie got a beautiful plain leather bag. I've gotten pretty good at bargaining. I've found that it's a lot easier to bargain for someone else, when I'm not invested in the article that I'm bargaining for. Knowing numbers in Arabic really helps too! We stepped into a Berber jewelry shop were the owner insisted on ordering tea and sweets for us. He also pulled out two giant swatch of blue fabric and wrapped each of us in traditional Touareg headdresses. Then he piled on hundreds of dollars worth of jewelry. I love playing dress up! We also found a cool little café marketed towards tourists, certainly, full of abstract posters by one artist for sale for only 20 euros.
Sweet abstract art
Saturday night, we met up with the two guys from Boston for dinner and ran into our British friends from the taxi ride. We all had a lovely dinner at tapas restaurant overlooking one of the main venues. The big performance for the weekend was Ky-Mani Marley who performed several songs of his own angry rap creation and all of hi father's hits. We also paid $20 to sit in on the last few songs of a private concert. The band, 3Ma was composed of three musicians: one from Mali, one from Madgascar and one from Morocco (Maroc in French, hence the 3Ma). The best song was one describing African politics, full of dissonance and pantomiming bribing, arguing, and shooting a giant bazooka.
Ky-Mani Marley concert
Then it was back to the hotel for three hours of sleep before a looooooong (and uneventful—hamdililah) bus ride home.
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