Gnaoua in Essaouria.

It doesn’t matter if you can’t pronounce either of these words. Just know that Gnaoua (sometimes spelled at Gnawa) is wonderful hypnotic music, and that the Moroccan city of Essaouira holds a Gnaoua Festival every year in June. I wasn’t there in June, but the town was still full of this trance-like music. 

Essaouira riad

My first experience of Gnaoua was when live music struck up during dinner. The restaurant had been playing western light jazz on CDs, we’d been eating fried shrimps and octopus, and drinking Casablanca beer. Then the character of the music changed, and we walked around the Moorish partition to find a two-man band. One was playing an odd rectangular guitar-like box: a hasty consult of the guide book disclosed that this was a gimbri (described by some as a 'bass lute'). The other guy was playing an electronic keyboard. The gimbri-player was wearing a traditional Moroccan cap with a long tassel, which he was rhythmically swinging around his head in time with the hypnotic beat. Both musicians were young: what we were seeing here was a new edition of Gnaoua, a marriage of the traditional trance music of the desert sufis, and modern reggae, jazz and hip-hop.

It is this marriage that inspires the Annual Essaouira Gnaoua Festival, and attracts western musicians to come and perform and improvise with their Moroccan brothers in music. After this revelation late at night in the restaurant (resulting in a 1 am return to our backstreet riad in the medina), the search commenced for some CDs of Gnaoua music. A number were eventually purchased, but nothing seems quite as special as those two guys amongst the exotic pillows of the restaurant bar, the gimbri-player with his tassel swinging.

Backstreets of Essaouira.
You never know what you will find.

Wikipedia has information on the origins of Gnaoua and the Essouira Festival.

And for the music itself: here’s a clip gleaned from You-Tube:

Mt Toubkal: 1; Your blogger: 0

Morocco's Atlas Mountains

Mt Toubkal, for those of you who have never heard of it (which included me a few months ago) is the highest mountain in Morocco, and indeed in North Africa. It is 4167 metres high. But after four days of slogging along some very rocky and dusty goat-tracks in the High Atlas, none of these statistics was enough to make me want to climb the thing. I must be getting old. Everest Base Camp: yes. Mt Kilimanjaro: yes. Toubkal: who cares? Where’s my tent?

Your blogger rests. Again.

Toubkal is about 4 hours trek (unless you’re me, in which case it’s 5 hours) from the nearest village, Imlil. But our intrepid party of 14 trekkers, 2 guides, 8 muleteers and a corresponding 8 mules, decided that this was too easy. Instead, we spent four days getting to the base of Toubkal the hard way: over mountain passes, through remote Berber villages, and up and down rocky tracks which the mules only just managed.

Our cheery busload set out from Marrakech, passing Richard Branson’s magnificent compound on the way to a tiny village in the foothills of the Atlas Mountains. There we met up with our mules, those trusty beasts of burden who would be carrying our shelter and supplies for the next few days. Off we set in the midday heat of 35 degrees C (what was that about mad dogs and Englishmen?) for an uphill climb away from the village and over our first mountain pass. The day was enlivened by the sight of Morocco’s famous tree-climbing goats, sitting in the branches of argane nut trees (the source of Morocco’s equally famous argane oil). Even on day one, I found the going rather long and tough. And uncomfortably hot. However, camp was on a grassy patch under walnut trees on the edge of a village. This had the advantage of being soft under-tent, but the disadvantage of being woken by the 4.30 am call to prayer from the local mosque. 

On the trail.

The next few days saw us climbing over ever-higher passes, the scenery dramatic, stark and barren. Beautiful in its own way, but the mood of your blogger was degenerating with every difficult step. The best bits were when I could walk in the shade; or when we finally reached a windswept pass and the next few hours would be downhill. I must sadly admit that at times I forgot to enjoy myself.

Resting again

There were some lovely lunch stops beside mountains brooks; there were spectacular sunsets from our rocky hillside campsites; there was the joy of icy-cold mountain streams for washing of the dust. Then there was the sheep that our team managed to slaughter for dinner (I may never eat lamb again); a ridiculously steep scree slope to climb (75 switchbacks - I counted ‘em); and the dust storms that coated my already-sad cheese sandwich with an additional layer of dirt. Yes, I did burden my companions with a bit of whinging. Our intrepid and professional guide Said (who has climbed Toubkal about 150 times, once in 14 hours return from Imlil in the snow) told me that he was pleased that I was going to climb the mountain. He said he worked with many Australians, most of whom complained that the trekking was “too hot and too far”. Wait a minute - isn’t that what I just said?

Goats in the argane trees

At the foot of Toubkal we camped outside a refuge, where - blessedly - there were hot showers. Remind me again why I have to climb this mountain? I made the decision to cop out, and then worried that I’d regret it. The next day, most of my companions set out, some  no stronger trekkers than I, but clearly stouter of heart. It took the strongest of them about 5 hours to return, the slowest about 8 hours. The horrible scree slopes were discussed more than the view. I felt vindicated in my decision, despite the howling dust storms that had roared all day in camp. But...as you can perhaps tell, I do feel a bit of a wimp....

Humans - and mules - on a goat track.

Yes, we climbed all the way up there.

The ascent trail of Mt Toubkal. From camp :-)

Morocco’s Atlas Mountains look a lot more beautiful to me now in my photographs than they did while I was slogging along the trail in the heat. But I did enjoy the best part of a good trek: the company of my companions, the guidance of a great guide, and the insight into an interesting culture. I won’t soon forget coming across “Boutique de Mohamed”, complete with an attractive cow in a cow shed, high up in the rocky Atlas. I bought mint tea from Mohamed, and temporarily forgot my complaints.

Sunset in the Atlas.

Boutique de Mohamed, and proprietor

Djemaa El Fna

In the world’s great cities, are many great squares, large and small: think Times Square, Tianamin Square, Trafalgar Square, the exquisite Grand Place in Brussels or Place de Voges in Paris. In Marrakech, it’s the Place Djemaa El Fna (spelt in a variety of ways, none of which assist in correctly pronouncing the name). It is the focus of the old medina, the original walled city heart. 

The fruits of Morocco

Monkey business (don't support this)

Along one side of Djemma El Fna is the great souk of Marrakech, where slaves were still sold until the early 20th century; and where today you can buy leather goods, brilliantly coloured clothing, brass pots and silver teapots, jewellery, trinkets, baskets, fresh mint and powdered eye of newt (I made up that last one, but in the traditional pharmacies of the souk, it is probably true).

On another route out of the great square - it’s huge - there is a line of dozens and dozens of horse and carriage outfits, ready to take your tourist dollar (or, rather, dirham) for a spin around the medina; and beyond them, the square Almoravid-era tower of the Koutoubia Mosque. 

Snake, anyone?

Dinner time

But it is in the great Place itself that the real interest lies. In the evenings, clouds of steam and smoke begin to rise, so that from far away you conclude that something is on fire. But it’s just the food stalls firing up for the evening. Tourists and locals mingle on the white painted benches to eat the street stall food (your blogger was not amongst them, I hasten to add). Waggons of dried fruit are piled up for sale; and juice purveyors will squeeze you oranges and lemons while you wait.

Smoke rising as the food stalls hot up

Henna artistes

Away from the stalls, you will see a variety of entertainments: monkeys on chains being encouraged to dance; snakes being draped about necks (again, something your blogger avoided). But moving further away from those looking for tourist-trade, you’ll find the entertainment for the locals, who come out to Djemaa El Fna in the evenings to promenade and see what’s going on, as families do in city squares the world over. There are musical bands of Arabic instrumentalists. There are be-robed ladies painting henna designs on hands and wrists. There are trance-dancers whirling to drum beats. But most interesting are the storytellers - no matter that they are telling their stories in Arabic. Watch their faces and those of their audience, and will enjoy the thrill of the story even without knowing what is going on. 

Music, Djemaa El Fna style

Listening to the stroyteller

In the daytime, you hurry across the great expanse of the square on your way to the souk or the tanneries or the medressa, clutching your bag and worrying about pickpockets. But at night you’re transported into an exotic North African world and allowed a glimpse of some of the things that must have inspired Scheherazade. Take a pocketful of dirham coins to tip the performers and enjoy the hot African night. 

Food stalls going wild

Djemaa El Fna by day

Postscript: Djemaa El Fna was the site of a bombing in April 2011when a cafe on the edge of the square, frequented by tourists, was blown up and lives lost. The cafe - not yet deleted from the guide books - remains boarded up, a grim reminder; but thankfully the bombing seems to have been a one-off and not a sign of terrible times for the magnificent and exotic Djemaa El Fna and its people.

Jardin Majorelle

Paradise, Moroccan style

Morocco includes large swathes of the Sahara Desert and 40+C temperatures in summer. Its Atlas Mountains are rocky, barren and windswept; and its history is wild and warlike and goes back many centuries. So when a tour guide in Marrakech suggests a visit to a garden, one wonders just what to expect. 

The Jardin Majorelle turned out to be a paradise: cool, quiet, beautiful. A cafe in a courtyard festooned with greenery swaying gently under soft water mist. Vividly coloured pots and architectural features; a small painted house; green and blue ceramic tiles; handily-placed benches inviting rest and contemplation. Inside the little house, a tiny and excellent museum of Berber history and culture. In the centre of the garden, a lily pond with goldfish and turtles. 

And in one quiet corner, a memorial to the French fashion designer Yves St Laurent. What’s the story here? The garden was established by the French-born painter Jacques Majorelle in the first half of the twentieth century, and he opened it to the public in 1947. Majorelle died in 1962, and the garden fell into disrepair, before being purchased and restored by Yves St Laurent and his partner Pierre Bergé. 

Majorelle was a noted collector of plants, but it is the garden’s design - the marriage of plants and architecture - that is most striking. That, and the peacefulness. I went back twice, and each time I visited I was reluctant to leave, and to exit again into the dusty, roaring, red streets of Modern Marrakech.

Your blogger slacking off in the jardin

Marrakech: The Red City

The Red City

What to expect from Morocco? Like ‘Casablanca’ and ‘Fez’ and ‘Tangiers’ the mere name evoked a whole slew of exotic and even mythic assumptions: from hoards of demanding beggars to Rick’s Cafe (“have you got the papers?”) to the creepy dreamworld of Paul Bowles’ “The Sheltering Sky”...what to expect? 

Marrakech riad

But the city I was headed to was Marrakech: surely there would at least be camels in the streets and crazy trance dancers in the Djemaa El Fna? Well, yes to both of those, plus much more: the dense and whiffy souks, the elegant Almoravid minaret called the Koutoubia, the elegant French cafes (which will serve you a cold ‘Casablanca’ brand beer if you sit inside, off the street), the absorbing back lanes of the medina where an intensely busy daily life plays out in the streets, the ruins of magnificent palaces, the crumbling walls of the kasbah. 

And in the case of Marrakech, all painted with a red brush. The city is often called ‘The Red City’ because both its ancient walls and the modern buildings of the new town outside the old medina are painted a monochromatic ochre-red.

Nightlife in Djemma El Fna

Highight: the great square called Djemma El Fna (pronounce it how you will!) where in the evenings the tourists come to eat at the food stalls belching savoury smoke; and the locals come to promenade in family groups and gather around the story-tellers and fortune-tellers and bands...entertainment like you’ve never seen anywhere else. Trance-dancers moving to the musicians’ beat; snake charmers winding their charges around the tourists’ necks; moneys on leashes and piles and piles of dates and apricots for sale, mounds of oranges ready for juicing. 

The "beautiful ruin" of the El badi Palace

Highlight: the remains of the great El Badi Palace, built by the Saadian Sultan Ahmad Al-Mansur in the 16th century. Once there were great reflecting pools, and the red walls were clad in marble and gold. But the sultan’s predecessor stripped and wrecked the great palace after his victory over the Sultan. There is a story that the Sultan, surveying his wonderous palace in it’s heyday, asked his jester what he thought of it. The jester is supposed to have wittily replied’ “it will make a wonderful ruin”...as indeed it does. 

As an added bonus, one of the remaining palace rooms now houses a precious relic of Islamic religious art: the ancient Minbar of the Koutoubia. If, like me, you first thought that was ‘minibar’, think again...a minbar is a kind of stepped pulpit from which the imam of a mosque presents his pronouncements. This one was built in Cordoba in Spain, in 1139 in the days when the Arabs controlled Andulucia, and is a marvel of intricate carving and inlay work.

The serene Saadian tombs

Highlight: the Saadian tombs...it took several abortive attempts and a short period of disoriented lost-ness in the backstreets (interesting in itself) to find the tombs, which were just closing...but perseverence prevailed and at last we were able to spend some time in the quiet enclave where the Saadian sultans, their families and courtiers are buried. They date from the same era as the palace (1578-1603), but the warlike successor to the Sultan did not destroy them but walled them off. They were only rediscovered in 1917 by an earlier aerial reconnaisance. As is common for muslim tombs, the resting places are marked only by low-level and low-key marble slabs, decorated in beautiful mosaics. 

Student accom: Ben Youssef Medressa

Highlight: the most beautiful building in Marrakech, the Ben Youssef Medressa, an Islamic school which once housed 800 students. Today you can visit the medressa’s beuatifully-proportioned inner courtyard and reflecting pool, see wonderfully intact mosaic work on the walls, and a couple of upstairs rooms furnished as they would have been when students lived and studied there.

There’s more...the Jardin Marjorelle dating from the 20th century; the souks (where slaves were still sold until the 1920s), the oldest building in Marrakesh, a small kiosk which is an example of the earliest Almoravid architectural features; the herbalists of Marrakech who will sell you a concoction for any aliment you may have; the tagines and mint tea and fire twirlers of the evening restaurants...The Red City is full of fascination.

Moroccan Blue

Said models his 'shesh'. Note the wind.

It is said that in the south of Morocco, where the Sahara begins, there was - or maybe, is - a tribe of Blue People . They wrapped their heads in long blue turbans, and their bodies in blue-dyed clothes. The blue dye rubbed off on their skin, leaving them an alluring shade of azure. These are the Taureg people, and whether the whole blue-skin thing is true or not, it is possible in Morocco to see many Berber heads swathed in turbans in gorgeous indigo of various shades. 

Our Berber guide Said called his turban a “shesh” and demonstrated how to tie one effectively, including some drapery for protection against dust storms - not a detail to be omitted, since in the Atlas Mountains there are plenty of dust storms. I will skip lightly over the dust-encrusted lunches we ate on the trail...

Essaouria

Apart from people and turbans, there is much beautiful blue in Morocco, particularly in the seaside port of Essaouira (Ess-a-WEER-a). Doors, windows, robes, boats, the sky, the awnings and the shutters...blue is the theme. 

Even in the so-called Red City of Marrakech,  in the beautiful Jardin Majorelle a deep indigo colour is almost shocking in its intensity, painted on urns and railings and walls and architectural features around the gardens, contrasting with almost as vivid yellow, green and orange. This garden was built in the 1940s by the French painter Jacques Majorelle; and re-purchased and restored by Yves St Laurent and Pierre Bergé. It is quite easy to spend hours there in its cool shade. So I did. Recommended.

Jardin Majorelle

New things I learnt today

Our Workbook - gotta start somewhere

Off to class this morning: three hours of ‘intensive Spanish’ – for beginners. Our teacher se llama Yolanda, and there are doce estudiantes. An interesting mixture: a teacher of art history, a girl from Israel, a lady about to have a baby, a fiction writer, an illustrator, a man who used to be on television but now owns a gym and dance studio, an American interior decorator, a Russian who used to live in Quebec, an actress, a man who likes Spanish films, and a professional girl polo player who lives half the year in Argentina. Y yo. It would be hard to make up that eclectic list.

I learnt one interesting thing this morning in the three hours spent upstairs at the Instituto Cervantes at Eaton Square in Belgravia – the full scoop on the Spanish surname thing. Each Spanish person has two surnames: the first surname of their father, and the first surname of their mother. In that order. Unless they marry a foreigner and things get thereby confused, they keep these two surnames throughout their lives, married or not. The children of a marriage take the first surname of their father and the first surname of their mother, per the rules.  You’ll note that after a generation or two, any name leading back through the maternal line is dropped, but did you really think it would be different?

Still don’t get it? Try this (all names made up):

Yolanda Vallés Rodriquez marries Alberto Vizcaíno Morcillo (she is Señora Vallés)

Their daughter Ana will have the surnames Vizcaíno Vallés

She marries Raul Olano Artigas (but remains Señora Vizcaíno)

Their son Luis will have the surnames Olano Vizcaíno

Right – glad we cleared that up.

What I need to do every day.

Life here in London is resuming its routine, including Monday’s visit to see Dan at the gym, and a check-up with Caragh Mary Bernadette, the Irish chiropractor. I learnt that the highest temperature Caragh managed over Christmas in Ireland was minus 11 degrees. I also learnt that one’s hip flexors are awfully important muscles, that is, if you want to be able to climb up and down stairs and other similar everyday activities. In fact, without them, you couldn’t actually sit down. They are what make you bend in the middle. There are a lot of them, and they don’t appreciate decades of sitting on your butt, especially on a bad chair. So stretch those hip flexors, folks!

Dan spent his New Year break in Morocco, and returns with a strong positive recommendation; which is excellent news as the Atlas Mountains in Morocco are the chosen destination of the next IP-Trek  outing next September.

Atlas Mountains, Morocco

I also learnt that miracles do sometimes happen: the Telecom Fairy visited me today and I now have – after only four months in London – decent broadband!!!!!!! Yes, after merely waiting five weeks for a technician, paying for a land line I don’t want, waiting a bit longer for delivery of the hub that BT could not, for some reason, send earlier, installing it myself because they don’t bother with that bit, figuring out what to do about the fact that the super-mod con St Pancras Chambers has non-standard telephone plugs that don’t fit anything.....we are ON AIR. Next time you have a whinge about Telstra or one of its devil’s spawn, just know that things are no different in the UK. Possibly worse, scary as that sounds. Still, I am not complaining tonight: I’m whizzing along here now!

And completely randomly, I also learnt today that when Isaac Newton discovered that light could be broken up into the colours of the spectrum, he deliberately chose seven colours because seven was a prime number considered to have mystical properties. If you ever wondered why there was very little difference between ‘indigo’ and ‘violet’ in the colours of the rainbow, that explains it.

Rainbow at Gullfoss, Iceland, last July (photo by me)

Photos from:  

http://www.drnickcampos.com/health-newsletter/StretchPain.html

http://www.difusion.com/catalogo_details/11/gente_1_nueva_edicion_libro_del_alumno.html

http://www.ip-trek.com/