The trance music of the Moroccan village of Jajouka in the foothills of the Atlas mountains has lured many westerners. Legend holds that descendants of Berbers took in the last members of a 7th century Iraqi army, who were found playing beautiful songs near the village. These survivors founded Jajouka's famed musical clan. The celebrated author and composer Paul Bowles has written about the village's annual reenactment of the ancient Rites of Pan, performed through eight ecstatic, moonlit nights to ensure fertility and maintain balance between the sexes.

he wailing, oboe-like, double-reed ghaitas, and the thundering tebel drums accompany this ritual. Beat poet William Burroughs once called the Master Musicians of Jajouka a "4,000 year old rock-and-roll band," and following that cue, the Rolling Stones' Brian Jones made a psychedelic record with the group in the '70s. Jazz colossus Ornette Coleman also recorded with musicians in Jajouka. New York producer and bassist Bill Laswell made a definitive field recording of the group, as well as a crossover release by multi-instrumentalist Bachir Attar, who became Jajouka's maalim or master when his father died in the late '80s. In the late `90s, British folk rock veteran Donovan Leach was drawn to collaborate with these mystic mountain musicians.

Contributed by: Banning Eyre