w/ DJ Cheb I Sabbah
Sat May 12, Baltic Room, 625--4444.

Like all men and women of great traditions, Bachir Attar's life reads more like a poem than a story. Born in Morocco, he is a composer and performer of Jajouka, which is an ancient type of court music that was patronized by seven Moroccan kings, and is played only by his family. "No one else in the world can play this kind of music," Bachir Attar says to me through a haze of cigarette smoke that slowly rises and drifts across the back porch of the Rosebud Cafe.

I ask if he means no one can play it because of some royal decree that bans all ordinary folk from learning the ancient art. "No, I mean it is too hard to learn. It takes total commitment to figure out how to play it. You must start as a child and do nothing else. That is the only way to learn this music, and why only my family can play it." If a man without a past or long family history made such an assertion, he'd be deemed arrogant, but coming from Bachir Attar it is simply the truth.

Indeed, only thousands of years of waste and obsession can create Bachir Attar's type of soul and mode of existence, which recalls, at every moment, heaps of pillows, folds of silk, and goblets of dark wine. Those of us who have no past, no memory beyond our fading grandparents, have the soul of a man perpetually running after a departing bus. We are imperfect, messy, and always missing something. To possess Bachir Attar's infinite repose, his stability at the center of the swirling world, one must descend from an immense family edifice that has its roots deep in the past.

However, with or without his group the Master Musicians of Jajouka, the music Attar plays is not as simple as his soul. It is a complex and demanding form of music, whose immense power and beauty is supernatural. Humans play songs, spirits play Jajouka. And like all prophets with secret powers, the performers of Jajouka all come from the mountains--the Rif Mountains, which are located south of Tangier. There, among the caves, rocks, and trees, Bachir Attar's family has lived for hundreds of years, performing and perfecting this music that can communicate with the dead, inspire the living, and heal the sick.

"We have many different sections of music," says Bachir Attar. "Some is for health, some is for dancing. We have a music which is called 'Pipes for Pan.' For this music, a young man dresses in a goat skin and dances. Then we have another music which is very heavy, called '55.' It is music which for many, many years was for the kings of Morocco. This music is large, with each section having many, many pieces."

Every Master Musician of Jajouka is only that: a master musician. Meaning, they have learned to do nothing else in life except play music. This is why their souls are so perfect; they only have one function in this world: to produce court music. "Let me tell you something," Attar says to me, as he lights another cigarette. "I never went to school as a boy. Why? Because when I was four, I listened to the beautiful music of my family and said, 'I don't want to go to school. I want to learn just music.' And that is what I did. Learn music."

Amazed by the very idea of being brought up without a standard education, I ask him what a day in the life of such a childhood was like. "I had friends. We played around the hills. Like you might play with toy cars and so on, we had games. We would sing to each other, and play instruments together, or play [hide--and--seek] with music. That is what I did in the village. And remember, there was no electricity or lights, just music."

The pastoral setting of Bachir Attar's childhood was not untouched and sealed; it was for many years a popular destination for the most glamorous artists of the Western world. The royalty of American avant-garde--letters (Paul Bowles and William S. Burroughs), rock (Rolling Stones), and experimental jazz (Ornette Coleman)--were admirers and friends of Attar's legendary family. True, Bachir Attar can go on at length about the famous people he has met and worked with during his life, but, again, it is never with arrogance or snobbery. Like all aristocratic souls who have been refined by history, all he ever offers is just the simple truth.