This week I
went to one of the most surreal jam sessions I’ve ever attended. Frequent readers may remember that a couple
of weeks ago I met a high school aged guitarist at the local hipster café. Since then I’ve run into him a few times in
the café and around the neighborhood and have met the members of his band. This past Saturday they invited me to sit in
on their rehearsal at the Dar Chebab. I
don’t remember if I’ve mentioned it before; our Dar Chebab here has a drum
set. They are a four-piece metal/hard
rock band, although unfortunately their regular lead guitarist was sick, so a
couple of their guitar playing friends and I rotated in on 2nd
guitar and we had a jam session instead of rehearsal. It was a lot of fun; they are an extremely
talented group of kids. The boy I met
first is the singer and rhythm guitarist.
He has fantastic technical chops on the guitar (which means I’m very
excited to meet his lead guitarist). His
musical interests seem to tend towards the progressive end of the genre. I’ll expose him to Porcupine Tree sometime
soon. The bass player can lay down a
solid groove, though he was having some trouble with his amp (they use a guitar
amp with the bass pumped up for a bass amp, this is a matter of necessity
rather than taste, Fes doesn’t seem to have many shops for electric
instruments). The drummer is a great
player on both drums and bass. It’s
clear that while he likes metal his musical interests are quite a bit wider. One of the additional guitar players was a
trash metal player; the other was more of a blues and classic rock guy. It was an interesting mix. Unfortunately my brain wasn’t with me and I
didn’t bring either my recorder or my camera.
I’ll make sure not to repeat the mistake when I go to their next
rehearsal.
For the
first hour and a half or so I just listened as the other guitar players rotated
in and out. Since my knowledge of metal
is extremely limited I can’t tell you what they played, though it was all very
up-tempo and technically complex. The
thrash metal influence was clear. It’s
not anywhere near my favorite music, but they were having a blast and playing
well so I had a good time. After one
particular aggressive number my friend decided he’d rest his fingers and handed
his guitar over to me. The bass player
and drummer had switched places a few songs before. The drummer’s bass playing focused around
slapping; he clearly wanted to play some funk. I thought he’d have fun with a dramatic rhythmic
change from the metal they’d been playing, so as soon as I had the guitar I
started to play the bass line to Herbie Hancock’s “Chameleon.” If the looks of excitement on his and the
bass player (now on drums) faces weren’t enough, the looks of confusion from
the more metal focused players made the change worth it. They all ran with it though, and we had a
fun, though strangely guitar feedback inflected, version of “Chameleon.”
On the next
song the thrash metal player handed his guitar off to the classic rock
guy. I let him pick the song. He started playing “House of the Rising Sun,”
which anyone who’s ever played with me knows is one of my favorites. Apparently the rock classics are classics the
world over. We jammed through a bunch of
songs and chord progressions, constantly changing line-ups (I politely declined
making them suffer through my drumming, though I was impressed to see that
pretty much any of them could double competently on any of the instruments there). The only song that threw them for a loop was
Porcupine Tree’s “Sound of Muzak.” The
time signature in the verse shifts back and forth between 6/8 and 8/8 and the
drummer (back on drums) had a little trouble dealing with the change. No shame in that, it took me longer than I
care to admit to be able to play it, and I’d heard the song before. They liked the tune though, so we decided to
jam through repeats of the chorus and a modified version of the verse that
stayed in 8/8. The first boy I met, back
on the other guitar, played a wild solo over it. We played until the Dar Chebab closed,
another hour after I picked up the guitar.
It was a lot of fun, even though my fingers burned for days afterwards. A month of not playing and my callouses are
gone!
Towards the
end of the jam session the mudira
(director) of the Dar Chebab came in and introduced us to a local teacher who
wants to start a formal music program there.
The mudira did not introduce
me especially as an American, so I just went through a standard greeting in
Darija. The musicians and I had been
speaking an English-Darija patois. Their
English is good enough that my limited Darija can fill any holes in our
communication. He stayed and jammed for
a while; in addition to being a math teacher he says he’s a semi-professional
flamenco guitarist! After the jam he and
I started to talk. I introduced myself
as a Peace Corps Volunteer. In a pride
inducing moment he said, “I thought you were Moroccan!” One of the boys asked, “What, do you think we
speak in English for fun?” Guess my
accent is getting better. After the jam
I went with the boys and the teacher to watch the soccer game at the local
café. Another volunteer joined and we
started to talk with the teacher. He was
very interested in our work and with our take on the cultural similarities and
differences between Morocco and America.
It was interesting to see how a Moroccan teacher views the Peace Corps’
Youth Development project. He believes
that the biggest difference between Moroccan and American youth is that
American youth are encouraged to chase their aspirations and ambitions from a
young age in a way that Moroccans are not.
He thinks a big part of our mission will be to help children search
themselves and find their ambition. I
took his number. Hopefully he and I will
be able to work on some music programs at the Dar Chebab before the end of my
training, if nothing else.
The next
day I took my second real trip to the Medina.
This time we took a bit of time to see some of the sites, rather than
just get lost and explore, though there was a bit of that too. My roommate from Rabat, one of the girls from
my training group, and I met up early and walked into the Medina from the Ville
Nuveau (the part of the town built by the French during the Protectorate, it
was once a European only area, now it’s the center of any Moroccan city). We entered in the Mellah (Historically Jewish District), which in Fes is very
interesting. The medieval Muslims and
medieval Jews built their parts of the city differently. The Jews, unlike the Muslims, built balconies
out from their houses over the street, which means that their district looks very
different, overshadowed by the brightly painted balconies. We planned to walk through the newer part of
the Medina and meet up with some others near the gardens I described in my last
post. My roommate and I were confident
that our sense of direction and relative knowledge of where we were going would
see us through the maze. Our friend was
confident that we would lead her in a big circle. Take a guess who was right. There’s something to be said for feminine
intuition, we literally popped out of gate five feet away from the one we went
in. It was not time wasted. In the process of getting lost we stumbled on
a sooq (open air market) where we
could have bought delicious looking fruit, lamb head, and “the best coriander
in Fes!”
Following
another route (and a few more wrong turns) we met our friends near the Bab Bou
Jeloud, one of the old city’s main gates (it’s the gate in the photo in my last
post). We’d heard that some Volunteers
working in the Small Business Development sector would be at Café Clock, one of
the medina’s most popular tourist cafés, to promote an event called Marche
Maroc, a Peace Corps organized crafts fare for Moroccan artisans. We’d heard correctly, as had a bunch of other
trainees, I think I’m not exaggerating when I say about a third of our training
class passed through the restaurant in the time we were there. The food was delicious, the view from the
roof incredible, and the Peace Corps volunteers and crafts were
fascinating. I’ll talk more about Marche
Maroc later in the post, since we had a chance to visit their real event on
Tuesday.
Across the
street from Café Clock is the Medrasa Bou Inania. Bou Inania was a religious school built in
the 1300s. It has a fully functioning
mosque built into it. It is one of the
few mosques in Morocco that lets non-Muslims in. The inside is stunning. I’m not even going to try to describe the
intricate carving work; the pictures will have to do it for me. I can only say that in the courtyard, with these
carvings surrounding you on all sides, the effect is even more dramatic. From Bou Inania we wandered down one of the
Medina’s main thoroughfares past some live chickens and spice shops. We turned off onto a side path and exited
through one of the Medina’s northern gates and climbed a small hill up to the
Merenid Tombs. These also date from the
1300s. They are a royal cemetery, long
fallen to ruin. They have a commanding
view over the entire old city. While up
there, a jellaba seller came by to
peddle his wares. My roommate and
another trainee bought one each, but he didn’t have a color I wanted (I’m a fan
of the brown, perhaps because they look the most Obi-Wan Kenobi-ish). Not that my lack of interest stopped
him. He was seemed fairly convinced that
I wanted nothing more in the world than his bright purple robe. If I had been I would have gotten it for a
steal, but both it and the flowery one he offered me seemed very feminine. I’m glad I didn’t buy. When we returned to the medina the
shopkeepers started to laugh at my roommate; he’d apparently been fobbed off
with a woman’s jellaba. None of us could tell the difference. I was actually taken with his too, had it
been brown I would have gotten it. He
made up for it and got a cool woolen hat, as you’ll see in the photos below.
After a
little more exploring and a drop into a bookstore our trip was done. It was good to visit a bookstore; it’s the
first I’ve spotted since I got here. Our
LCF explained today that Moroccans don’t normally read for fun (he is an
exception). This jibes with my
family. Other than for schoolwork, I’ve
never seen any of my host siblings touch a book. I’d like to blame this on the overuse of
T.V., but I think it might be a very old situation. There is only one verb, kan-qra, to describe both the actions of reading and studying. I’ve been thinking a lot about language recently,
and on methods of communication. In
Morocco communication is not in a single language. While Darija is the main language, the
average Moroccan can communicate at least conversationally in two other
languages, French and Classical Arabic.
Darija is not a written language (though it can be), writing is done in
Classical Arabic. In other words, the
written language here is not the language of everyday communication. Perhaps this is why reading for pleasure is
not common. In addition to these three
languages, many Moroccans speak at least one dialect of Amizigh. There are three or four dialects in country,
seemingly depending on who is counting.
In addition, a sizable minority of Moroccans cans also speak English,
Spanish, or German. That’s five
languages, or more! The amazing thing
is, people don’t stick to one. They can,
and do, switch from one to the other in the course of a single sentence. Communication becomes a matter of speaking in
the most convenient combination of languages between the two speakers, and the
fascinating thing is that it’s not always predictable. I listen in while our LCF talks to the mudira, sometimes the conversation is in
Darija, but just as often they slip into French. I haven’t heard him do this when he talks
with the other LCFs, it just must be the best way to talk with her about the
topics they’re discussing. On the one
hand, I’m worried I’ll always be missing something, not being communicative in
all these languages. On the other, it is
incredible to watch!
It was an
amazing weekend, but this week has treated me well too (I’ve definitely had
more honey than bee stings recently). In
language we’ve moved from our heavy grammar study of last week to a more
topical study of vocabulary for various situations, such as bargaining and
shopping for food. More importantly,
we’ve had some important training experiences, the most important of which was
our trip to March Maroc on Tuesday.
Marche Maroc is a crafts fare that the Small Business Development
Volunteers have been hosting for the last few years. Artisans come from all over the country to a
major city for a fair organized by the Peace Corps. This one, obviously, was in Fes. Unfortunately, because the program here is
moving entirely into Youth Development this Marche Maroc will be one of the
last ones. We went partially to see the
fair, but also to get information from the volunteers on ways we can work with
artisans in our sites and maybe try to organize similar fairs on at least a
regional level (without the funding they’ve had the National fairs will be
almost impossible). One our most
interesting contacts was with an RPCV (Returned Peace Corps Volunteer) who
finished his service a couple of years ago and is now working with Moroccan
artisans on setting up a website for them to sell their products. It’s still in the formative stages right now,
but for more information you can visit www.theanou.com.
The fair
itself was incredible. It featured
traditional arts from all over the country, from weavings and carvings from to
desert to daggers from the mountains to jewelry from the plains between the
mountains and the coast. There were also
people selling fresh cous cous and argon oil for both cosmetic and
gastronomical purposes. I don’t think
I’d ever eaten argon oil before their sample (I just dipped some bread in it,
like a nice olive oil), but I immediately bought a bottle as a gift for my host
mother upon trying it. She was very
excited when I pulled it out for her; it’s a treat they don’t get to have
often.
Alright, I
think that’s almost all for this post. I
will finish by giving the recipe for a noodle dish my host sister taught me and
another Joha story.
The Joha
story comes via my roommate in Rabat. He
also likes Joha stories, and told me this one the other day. I realize I’ve only told stories that paint
him as a bit of a bumbler. He’s actually
a really interesting and frighteningly intelligent person, and easily the most
passionate warrior against poverty I’ve ever met. I have all these stories where he makes a
language or clothing based mistake only because he puts himself out there more
than all the rest of us, and for every hilarious mistake story there are tons
of successes. There more times you put
yourself out there the more likely you are to make a mistake, and the more
likely you are to learn. That’s the
approach he and I both try to take anyways, though he’s better at it than I am. Before joining the Peace Corps he worked in
Americorps in Kansas City. Apparently
they told this Joha story when they would go to work in soup kitchens.
One day
Joha was invited to a feast. He had been
working all day and he didn’t have a chance to change his clothes before the
feast. As such he was in his working
clothes, which were torn and sweaty. The
people at the feast were very rude and ignored the poorly dressed man. Eventually he went home and changed into his
nicest coat. Then he returned to the
feast. When he came back everyone wanted
to talk to him. He was the life of the
party, until he went to the table and started to stuff food into his
pockets. The other guests asked why he
was stuffing food into his pockets.
Joha said,
“When I was here earlier in my poor clothes everyone ignored me. When I came back in this coat everyone talked
to me. I haven’t changed, so it must be
the coat you all really like. Since he
is obviously the guest of honor, I thought he should enjoy some of the feast.”
Recipe:
I’ve been calling this shareia in my posts, but I’ve since
discovered that shareia is actually
the name for the noodle they normally make it with (a kind of short spaghetti),
and they call anything cooked with that noodle shareia. When I’ve had this
sauce with other noodles they call it macaroni. I haven’t been able to explain to them that
I’m asking for the name of the sauce…
I’ve had this particular sauce with
several different kinds of noodles now, shareia,
shareia chinois (vermicelli), and macaroni,
which has been either rotini or shells.
I like it best with rotini, but feel free to play around with it.
The primary ingredient is
cilantro. This confused me for a while;
they kept calling it qsabur, which is
the word for coriander. Talking with
other trainees, I’m glad I wasn’t alone in my ignorance when I discovered that
cilantro is the plant grown from the coriander seed, which is what we call
coriander.
All measurements are
approximations; they don’t really measure in this kitchen.
Ingredients:
Chopped Cilantro. A
lot. Have a good solid handful of the
plant before cutting it.
2-3 cloves garlic
Olive Oil
2 tablespoons tomato paste
½ teaspoon coriander (what we call coriander)
1 tablespoon powdered ginger
1 tablespoon paprika
Pinch of saffron
Salt and pepper to taste
Blend cilantro with water and olive oil until its smooth (like
a pesto, but with cilantro).
Add tomato paste and coriander and mix well.
Put on medium heat, add the rest of the ingredients.
Heat until hot, mix with pasta.
That’s it!
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