Search - Musical Brotherhoods from the Trans-Saharan Highway on DVD

Best $22 I ever spent

Imogen | Mid-Coast | 02/14/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Amazing music all the way through. Amplified Ouds, lutes, and banjoes abound. I know that banjoes are originally African, but the ones used look like 5 and 6 string American Standards. I read somewhere that the Jajouka Brotherhood, (not featured in this movie), are still using the same gear left by Brian Jones when he visited Morroco in the 60's.
Anyway, I'm sure this doc will inspire many crusty anarcho-punks to drop the Balkan-Gypsy music bag and to pick up Ouds and Rabbabs instead, for better or worse."

DVD Review for the following

sammy | NYC | 02/12/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

"
Musical Brotherhoods from the Trans-Saharan Highway
(Sublime Frequencies)

A film by Hisham Mayet

Musical Brotherhoods from the Trans-Saharan Highway (Sublime Frequencies-DVD) Filmed in Marrakesh, Morocco at a bazaar known as Jemaa Al Fna, Musical Brotherhoods from the Trans-Saharan Highway captures the rich musical life of this public meeting place, which every night transforms into a sprawling patchwork quilt of simultaneous musical performances. The "Brotherhoods" that take over the square at night each purvey their own brand of ecstatic trance music -- intricately ornamented (and often incredibly fast), electrified ouds, mandolins and banjos blare through improvised amplifiers cobbled together from car stereo parts and megaphones, backed by a battery of Moroccan frame drums, handclaps and group chants. Audience/performer boundaries seem to vanish in these nightly rituals, with members of the crowd taking turns drumming, clapping, singing and jumping into the circle to take a turn dancing solo. As I watched this DVD, I couldn't help feeling a little impoverished -- this is surely some of the most incredible communal music you will ever have the good-fortune of seeing, and it all happens in the street. Elsewhere in the square, boxing matches take place, a falcon trainer shows off his bird and a man spins selections from a dusty stack of Arabic 45s. As is the case with the vast majority of the Sublime Frequencies catalogue, Musical Brotherhoods does not provide answers or interpretation as much as it does a much needed sense of longing and humility in the face of the culture it documents; there is no narrator other than the camera's intimate hand-held movements, and filmmaker Hisham Mayet's (Jemaa Al Fna,Folk Music of the Sahara: Among the Tuareg of Libya, ISAN: Folk and Pop Music of Northeast Thailand, NIGER: Magic and Ecstasy in the Sahel) lingering gaze is easy to imagine as your own. Propelled by incredible music, Musical Brotherhoods is an entrancing, hour-long trip through what is undoubtedly an endangered musical form. If you liked the Group Doueh or Group Inerane records recently issued by Sublime Frequencies or have been bit by the Saharan guitar bug, this is essential viewing." Che Chen/othermusic.com"