Last night I had the long-awaited pleasure of watching the Master Musicians of Jajouka perform live (at UCLA’s Royce Hall, part of their six-city US Winter Tour 2009). I’ve been a fan for almost 20 years, a dreadfully brief time considering their music, by some estimates, has been passed down for over 1300 years. (Beat writer William S. Burroughs famously described MMJ as a “4000-year-old rock band”.)

It’s difficult to describe the music of Jajouka, especially to Western ears . . . the serpentine buzz of ghaitas (double-reed horns made of apricot wood whose sound most resembles oboes) matched with the insistent percussion of tebels, djarbougas, and bendirs creates a trance-like, “flangeable” soundscape that—eyes closed, ears open—eventually reveals the deceptively simple melodies and rhythms disguised by the swirling music’s immediate intricacies.

Listen for yourself:

If you ever get the chance to witness a Jajouka performance, hesitate not. Like The Wife, you may be pleasantly surprised by how well a night of Jajouka goes down.