Essaouira, Port of Timbuktu

Wow.  Essaouira is so amazing!  It’s been such a whirlwind since I arrived that I haven’t had a chance to write anything down and I have so much to say, but I’m going to give it a go!

I’ve totally hit it off with Anna, the girl from Belgium who was staying with Youness, my AirBnB host.  She’s here expressly for the purpose of attending the music festival as well.  She’s a big fan of Gnaouan music because she dated a guy from Essaouira a few months ago, I guess, who introduced her to the music.  Since she has been to Essaouira before (although this is her first festival), she knows several people who live here in town.  It seems like everywhere we go in town we run into people she knows!  It really makes this town, bustling and busy as it is with the festival, seem small, friendly, and welcoming.

The first day after we got up and had some breakfast with Youness at a nearby restaurant, Anna and I decided to go see the battlements of Essaouira and check out the town a little bit during the day before the concerts began.  I had heard about the battlements of Essaouira because they were built by the same person who built the ones in St. Malo, a place I visited in France while there for my friends Betsy and JP’s wedding in 2010.  Immediately upon arriving at the walls of the town, I could see the similarities.

Essaouira is essentially a small fortress built on the Atlantic coast.  In days gone by, it was known as the Port of Timbuktu, as this is where ships would have to dock to unload for access to the Sahara and deeper into Africa.  The road to Marrakesh from Essaouira is a straight line, and from there, caravans would embark on the journey to Timbuktu.  For many years, Essaouira was the main port of Morocco.  So now I’m at the port of Timbuktu…to attend a music festival (definitely not somewhere I’d have expected to be if you’d asked me a few years ago)!

Anna and I enjoyed looking over the walls of the city as the ocean waves crashed against the battlements.  It was a spectacular view.  We checked out the inside of the medina as well, walking from one end around to the other.  It was very nice, clearly bustling for the festival.  Some of the items on sale were rather comical as well.

We met up with Youness for the opening concert that night.  We returned to the house before him and were horrified to realize, after sitting on the balcony for a few minutes, that the baby eagle had been dangling for the whole time from his ankle tether, which had gotten hung up on the laundry clotheslines!  I only noticed it because he flapped his wings a little, adjusting himself.  It looked a bit like when you hang a live chicken upside down to carry it to market.  Clearly, he had tried to fly away, or was testing his wings, but had gotten his string tangled by flying from here to there so that he ran out of length.  He was just a couple of centimeters away from being able to perch on a water faucet nearby and couldn’t get up enough momentum to swing over.

After a few moments of intense discussion about what to do, and not wanting to get pecked or traumatize the bird any more than had already happened, I slowly approached his corner of the balcony.  I picked up a plant pot base, shaped like a plate, and approached the bird, until I was able to put the plate near enough for him to climb onto.  I lifted the plate with the baby eagle standing on it up over the clothesline and around until he was a bit less tangled and let him step back onto his normal area.  He stayed near my hand – within a few centimeters for a minute or so!  I was so excited, I was talking in a low voice to Anna – I’ve never been so close to a baby eagle, and he was so calm!  I know he was a bit acclimated to humans because of Youness, but still!  It was cool.  Clearly, he’s figured out how to fly!  When we told him about it upon his return, Youness said he’d have to untie him so he could fly away and start living on his own.  It’ll be interesting to see if he sticks around or comes back to visit his former “home” after he leaves.

So we left to go to the Place Moulay Hassan, the main square of the town, so we could go to the opening concert of the show.  There are four or five different stages set up throughout the city, with shows playing over the next several days.  The main ones are either in the central square or ata a stage set up directly on the beach.  This should be a great festival!  The concerts are all free, but Anna had gotten a special pass so she could go into the front area of the show, where you can go right up against the stage or find seats to sit near the front.  Otherwise, you stand in the back area (like a commoner, haha).  Clearly, this is what I had planned on doing; however, we decided to give it a go and tried the method of having Anna say, “They’re with me,” when she went through the security with her pass.  It worked!  We were suddenly right in the front of the concert, directly up by the stage!  Smooth move, Anna!

When we arrived, a guy named Maâlem Said Oughassal was playing with his band.  These guys are a typical Gnaouan musical group.  Typically, the Maâlem (or Master) plays the gimbri (or hajhuj), a 3-stringed instrument, and percussion is provided by multiple krakebs (or qraqab) which are metal castanet-type instruments.  Here is a pretty good example of the sound the band makes, and this is a clip of the guys really going to town on the krakebs.

The other concert we saw that night, which was the one Anna had been telling us about (and with good reason, it turned out) was Didier Lockwood.  This was an incredible performance.  This artist is a French electric violinist who is absolutely phenomenal.  I had never seen someone play like this.  He would loop his sounds in some of his songs and made really unique sounds.  Here he is looping one of his songs.  It’s amazing work and right at the beginning I thought that it actually sounded like seagulls at the ocean!  We had a great time.

After the concert, we went to get some coffee, and Youness introuduced us to a drink they have in Morocco – verveine au lait.  It’s fresh verbena leaves in hot milk.  Oh man, I have fallen in love with this deliciousness….