Music Lessons and All-NightClubs

Anna and I had decided to stay an extra night in Essaouira after the festival ended and so we got a hotel room near the center square of town to share the next day.  She’d been staying at another friend’s house the previous night or two, so we met up the next morning to check in at the Hotel al Fath, right near the battlements.  After we took a (much needed) nap, we headed out into town to look for a gimbri – the three-stringed guitar-like instrument used in Gnawa music.  Anna had been saying all week that she wanted to purchase one so she could learn how to play.

First, we decided to stop for some food.  Afterwards, we headed to Bob Music, a shop that I know I’d been wanting to check out since I’d first seen it.   Anna wasn’t expecting to find an instrument there, but wanted to see the store too.

Even the alley leading to the store was covered with Bob Marley paraphanalia.   Other artists, too, but mainly Bob!  Inside, they even had one of my very favorite, but rarely seen photos of Bob on the wall, crammed in among musical instruments, shirts, and signs.  My eyes were inundated.

While in the store, we started talking to the guy about the instruments in Gnawa music.  He had some krakebs, so we started fiddling around and the next thing we knew, we were getting a full-on lesson on how to play.  The krakebs are like two conjoined metal castanets.  You play them with your thumb and fingers, clanging them together.  Usually you alternate between your left and right hands.  We had a great time, learning several different rhythm patterns and playing  up a storm.

Ears ringing, we stepped back into the medina, determined now to find a gimbri for Anna.  I’m not sure if Anna new about the actual store we went to or just the general vicinity of music instrument stores, but somehow we ended up at a small shop down an alley in the medina, relatively near to our new hotel.  Inside the shop, which looked and smelled a bit like a carpentry shop, sat a smallish man, working on a musical instrument.  He was cutting pieces out of the end of it and replacing them with wedges of a different type of wood.  He had wood carvings around him, as well as a couple of completed musical instruments.

One gimbri, up against the wall, was completed and had been inlaid with mother-of-pearl, in addition to other wood.  It was a beautiful instrument.  Also, there were many drums in the room and some different animal skins stretched out to dry along the walls.  All of this, packed into a room no more than 3 meters square!

Anna started talking to Said, the artist, (mostly in French) and found out he had sold most of his instruments this week, but that she could actually purchase the instrument he was working on now if she was willing to wait for him to finish it.   He also said he’d work the night to try and finish it for her, if need be.  While we were talking, by then sitting on wooden pieces, laid across the empty bases of drums-to-be, he had been stringing the gimbri.  Watch here.

When he had finished stringing the instrument, he began tuning it and then played an impromptu song as he tuned.  He also told us about the instruments used in gnawa music and how he made the gimbri.  Listen.  We left the shop to let him finish the gimbri.  The rest of the inlay needs to still be done in the back of the instrument and it still needs to be varnished before it will be finished.  He said we could come back for it late tomorrow morning, which fits the schedule.  Anna and I are both taking buses out of town tomorrow afternoon.

So we have a final night in Essaouira to have a good time.  We had run into a guy we had seen throughout the week named Mohammed.  He said the neatest thing to us earlier on in the week.  He had mentioned that his band was playing somewhere and we should come.  When we saw him the next day and hadn’t been able to make it, his answer had been, “Hey, life is full of choices.”  A super-chill response.  I liked it.  Anyway, Mohammed asked us if we wanted to come to the beach with him tonight or to some jazz club.

We went to a bar with Mohammed and some of his friends.  We met a girl named Rachel who was traveling as well, from Australia.  Anna and I went to say goodbye to Youness and then met everyone up again at the jazz club.  There was a pretty good band playing a kind of Jazz-Gnaouan fusion and so we enjoyed ourselves until far into the morning – have a look at the band playing.  As we all stumbled home, having shut down the club, we agreed it had been a successful night!

Anna and I only had a couple of hours to grab some sleep before we had to get up and go pick up her gimbri from Said in the morning!  We’re looking forward to that.