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Morocco is not all narrow souks and sleepless nights. It is also a country of unique natural beauty. With three distinct zones and several transitionary environments, the vast bulk of Moroccan land would be as beautiful as Zion or Yosemite if left undisturbed by man. When I had the occasion, I passed through the Rif Mountains in the north, famous from Bowles’ writing as a place of deep beauty and separatist-remoteness. The Berber people who live there, the Riffians, had their own language in Bowles’ day, and he toured them often in his “motorcar” recording music for the Library of Congress compliments of the taxpayer. To this day the largest collection of folk music from Morocco, particularly from the north, is derived from his recordings in remote villages where electricity was spotty and rare. The valleys of the Rif are deep, and their peaks can reach the heights of the Alps. During a five-hour hike one can see the vegetation change from prickly pear cactus and agave to cedar and Mediterranean pine, where even under the sun that once cooked the forehead, one must put on their layers and gloves to protect against the cold. In the hills, shepherds, or those who simply wish to live in a place where they hear and see songbirds every morning, dot the hillside, passing time in a timeless fashion.
PICTURED: A rural pastoralist farm in the foothills of the Rif Mountains. PC: Andrew Corbley ©
It is beyond these peaks and down into these valleys that according to this reporter, Bowles, and the locals, the vast majority of the hashish and kif that arrive in Europe is grown. A tragically-illegal tradition, hashish and kif are made and smoked in vast quantities by the Riffians, who according to local sources, aren’t bothered almost ever by authorities. If they were made legal, perhaps the locals could generate some meaningful income for their small outcrops of terrace farming, pastoralism, and ecotourism, but the cultural stigma attached to kif and hashish from the days of colonialism will probably prevent that day forever. Down below the cedars the weather is beautiful, at around 1,200 meters above the level of the sea. There monkeys—Barbary macaques, can also be seen in troupes. In the valley bottoms echo drums from the villages, and the raw and wild calls to prayer of the Maghrebi mosque. In the villages themselves, one realizes it is not the pounding of drums, but the pounding of cannabis and hemp to make hashish and kif respectively.
Bowles described the incessant smoking of kif and hashish in Islamic societies, and the incessant drinking in Christian societies, as one of the fundamental cultural drivers of the differences between eastern and western civilization. We must understand that he was writing in a different sort of age, when many of the classical Islamic countries had just achieved independence from previous colonial masters. Furthermore, Bowles dearly loved Moroccan culture, and despised overly-imperial French remnants among her society. Still, in his memoirs of travel and recording, kif plays a common theme in the ruining of people’s lives, and he describes it as turning the people inward and making them sluggish and overly pensive. There’s nothing wrong with the selection of one perception-altering substance over another, and I think it’s a shame, in the same way that I think it’s a shame cannabis and other non-addictive, non-toxic substances like psilocybin are illegal in much of the U.S., that kif and hashish should be banned seeing as how they have been used as medicine (for good or for ill) for so long.
In another matter of colonial gossip, though Bowles was not a colonizer, I witnessed something strange in Fes which confirmed a rumor in which I bestowed about as much credence as the Flat Earth theory. You see Bowles was extraordinarily poignant and observant. As written above, where the French figures in his book would chortle or gawk at the local customs, or deride it as backwards, Bowles would observe it often as a quiet dignity; the sign of something truly unique and which would be appreciated eventually as the decades progressed. He was right, and Morocco has blossomed into Africa’s largest attractor of tourism. Indeed it feels quite unique here, I write, having never visited Egypt, Algeria, or Tunisia. In any case, Bowles noted that the Islamic authority had a difficult time stamping out the practice of certain cultish behavior among certain groups, particularly in the north; that men and women, though particularly the women, would become overtaken by evil spirits under the influence of certain music. Entering into a trance which they might not depart from for several hours, drums and the Moroccan obo brought them to throw their head and shoulders about, or scream. Bowles wrote in his memoirs that one woman he heard of left her house to do errands and never came home that night, fearing the sound of drums, even from far away, forever after.
I dismissed this all as simply residual snobbery leftover from a harsh colonialism mixed with native religious fundamentalism, and that it was simply just locals having a great time listening to the music of their ancestors. I must say however that Bowles’ description of this phenomenon is more or less entirely accurate. At a performance I witnessed it myself, and one young man with clear eyes and a smart sense about him commented that “it’s still happening today; we don’t know why”. Ahmed, the very kind proprietor of the establishment went on record with me saying “they’re crazy; they have couscous in their brains”.
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