Brahim Runs The Chaabi Down

Brahim is the first guy who hipped me to what the chaabi rhythm was all about. Without the aid of notation software it’s hard to give a visual representation of what it is, but you can think of it this way:

Brahim in Truro, MA Oct '04

Think of a bar of 12/8, meaning there are 12 eighth notes to the bar. Now divide that 12 into 4 groups of 3 notes. Imagine someone clapping on the first beat of each group of 3, four to a bar so we will end up with claps on 1, 4, 7 & 10. Now imagine the 3rd note of the group of 12 gets a high pitch (call it “tick”). Same with beat 8, another “tick”. Beats 5 & 11 get a low pitch – call it “dum”. Or “doom” if you prefer. Notice that NONE of these falls on any of the strong beats – 1, 4, 7 or 10. Now take away those downbeats and it gets interesting. The western brain (at least mine) when first presented with this rhythm without the aid of the clapped downbeats hears the low pitched accents – the “dooms” – as downbeats. Only they’re not. Thus you have the mystery of the Moroccan chaabi, which translates roughly as “popular” (there’s a whole style of music called Chaabi), which for me was like being introduced into a secret society, and i’ve always been interested in secret societies, going way back to reading Robert Anton Wilson’s Illuminatus Trilogy. Unless you have a Moroccan around to provide the missing downbeats you’re floating in space, dude. But when the secret handshake is performed and you begin to hear what the rhythm actually is…aha, we have a whole new smoke, my ba-rutha.

We recorded a live track at a Lizard Lounge show in May of ‘08 which based on this rhythm, and is part of our upcoming release Electric MoroccoLand (due late winter 2010). It was an improv (now titled Brahim Runs The Chaabi Down), and as with most of the stuff Club d’Elf does, it doesn’t adhere too formally to any one thing, so it’s not strictly a chaabi. But you can hear it in the accents that Dean plays on drums and Brahim on cajon, as well in the bass, which btw has alligator clips attached to the strings, giving it that weird, percussive sound. To hear this track go to our Myspace profile, which is probably the first time you’ve gone onto Myspace in awhile, we know. But that’s where you’ll have to go for now until I get the upgrade from WordPress and can upload mp3s here.

D'Elf w/ Vicente Lebron, Dave Fiuczynski & Micro at Lizard Lounge

Ahmed, Brahim, Aziz, Latifa & Micro in Truro, Oct '04

More fun with Moroccan music to come, as I prepare for my trip to Morocco, and then a lot more once I’m there and back. Choukran to my Moroccan peeps for opening me up to this mind-meltingly wonderful and sensual world of rhythm.

Salam,

Micro

Going to Morocco…in search of The One

Micro on sintir @ Lizard Lounge

Brahim in Truro, MA 10/04

Micro & Hassan in NYC circa '04?

It’s been a looooong time coming, but I am finally going to Morocco. I still can’t quite believe it’s going to happen, and won’t really believe it until I step foot on Moroccan soil. I know that’s just my dark, can’t-get-too-exited-about-things side, and it’s tempered by my giddy, can’t-believe-my-good-fortune-holy-fucking-shit! side. This will be the culmination of a long love affair between me and this magical country that has its roots in hanging out with Mark Sandman at his Norfolk St loft (Hi-N-Dry mach 2) in the mid-90s and listening to Hassan Hakmoun’s Gift Of The Gnawa while sharing a smoke. We marveled at the sound of the sintir, a 3-stringed bass lute with a camel-skin top that Mr Hakmoun was literally spanking the shit out of…wow. These roots deepened considerably several years later in ‘99 when I met and became friends with Brahim Fribgane, an incredible oud player and percussionist who was living in NYC at the time but originally came from Casablanca.

Brahim moved to Boston and joined Club d’Elf and became my roommate. With his tutelage I began to learn the intricacies of Moroccan music, which involved he and I sitting in my car on long drives to gigs or rehearsals and listening to cassettes of Berber and Gnawa music and me trying to find where “the one” was. In much Moroccan music there is no “one”, the place of emphasis where in Western music we begin counting the rhythm. “The one” is usually accented or emphasized in some way, but in Moroccan rhythms such as the chaabi the accent is on an upbeat and if listened to with Western ears such as mine, this upbeat becomes “the one”, only it ain’t. With Brahim’s patient help I would continually clap where I felt the beat, and he would invariably laugh and clap the true “one”, which was an eighth note or two away from mine. It was maddening, but I was so into it that I just kept at it, over and over, and began a process of self-brainwashing, where I would intellectually “know” where “the one” should be, and would clap that, fighting against the pull of where I was actually hearing it. At last it was like the aural equivalent of the visual phenomena of letting your eyes go out of focus while looking at something until it takes on a 3-D quality. When this happened, it was…a-mazing. Everything became clear in that instant, only to be lost soon again. Like long-distance running I just kept at it until I could go for longer stretches without losing “the one”. I don’t know how Brahim restrained himself from strangling me…I would not have been so relaxed if I were him.

For several years from about ‘00 to 03 I hung out with Brahim at his friend Abder’s store in North Cambridge called Moroccan Bazaar, now sadly gone. We would sit and drink tea and play and listen to music til all hours with all the Moroccans who would come by, as the store’s basement was a favorite after hours spot. I finally acquired a sintir when Abder, brought one back for me from a trip to Morocco to purchase merchandise for the store. With tips from Brahim and the Gnawa musicians who I met through him (including my hero Hassan Hakmoun) I set about learning to play this profound instrument, and began to incorporate it into the music that Club d’Elf was playing, which increasingly was becoming more and more influenced by Moroccan sources.

Flash forward to several months ago when I first learned of an organization called the University of the Middle East, which as it turns out in kind of a weird synchronicity, is located in the Armory in Somerville, the home of Hi-N-Dry and The Mark Sandman Music Project. Puzzling evidence. The UME are an NGO who are seeking to create links between cultures, and to that end had initiated a sister city program between Somerville, MA and Tiznit, Morocco. A delegation of people from Somerville, lead by Mayor Curtatone was going to Morocco and were accepting applications from teachers, educators, artists & musicians. Naturally I applied, and to my delight I was eventually accepted, but the cost of the trip was going to be too prohibitive for me to go. Oh well. They seemed confident that some grants might come through and asked me in the meantime to appear with them on a local cable public access show where they would discuss the trip. I would speak about my connection to Moroccan music and play a little sintir. Ok, I said. Well, the powers that be apparently saw the show and were impressed and a few days later I was notified that funding for me to go had been received. I…would…go…to…Morocco.

I’ll fill in more of the details in posts to come, as well as more of the back story. Gotta get ready for a gig tonight, so this will have to do for now.

Keeping it on the “and of one”

-Micro

11.28.09

P.S. This documentary on Sandman looks very promising. Watch the longer trailer on Vimeo…so cool to see the home movies of him as kid….

8.14.09 Lizard D'Elf w/ (L to R) Vicente Lebron, Paul Schulthies, Mike Rivard, Mister Rourke, Randy Roos & Dean Johnston