today i interviewed dave meinert, who part-owns the Mirabeau Room here in beautiful Seattle. Who cares, you say? Because after the requisite trade pub chit chat we got to talking about how he manages bands, and I had read online that he was the manager of the master musicians of the jajouka, and that he'd been to the small town of Jajouka where they, the royal court musicians of Morocco, lived. When I was there I had wanted desperately to go to Jajouka but couldn't convince my San Fran runaway french-speaking crustie backpack pal to accompany me through the rough times out to the village. Meinart said that the town can't really accomidate tourists, and that the hippie types that end up out there can't support themselves which must make it hard for the prestige-rich and materially poor musicians.

His talk reminded me of the Ted Levin book The Hundred Thousand Fools of God, which charts the problems of being a traditional musician and Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. Should there be schools set up in Morocco to teach this art form, traditionally passed down from father to son by repetition, a music with no prescriptive notation? Should such musicians' futures lie in ethno-tourism? In boho retreat accomidations for the romantically minded American eco-tourist type? well, you know my answer to this, and yet what of it that there are resources that could sustain these musicians, but that these resources are exchanged for an invitation into the private world of another? blah blah commerce and tradition, culture in change...

am listening to Linda Perhacs "Parellograms" which is a throwback to my psych-folk days but sounds like Blue-era Joni Mitchell than I remembered, with the arrangements and the way the voice is recorded - so far up. Am I the only one suspicious of vibrato? Maybe if I notice that it's 'vibrato' rolling off hackneyed then yes...still, as a string player I know that it is a choice, and that choice is towards smooth, warm, nostalgic fermatas.