The music on this trip was remarkable! Thanks to Richard and his flute, Mokhtar and his drumming, and Achmed and his castanets as well as the musicians we met along the way. In the smallest of villages in Morocco we found musicians and heard the most beautiful music! The waiters in restaurants and hotels along the way double as musicians and in the little Berber village we stayed in, the silversmith by day was a lotar player by night! And the talent! Amazing. Whilst walking at night in the desert I heard bongo drumming floating through the air. Add that sound to the starry Moroccan sky and to the sound of my feet trudging through the sand and it was magical! In Essaouira, on the Atlantic Coast, I was introduced to Ari Farka Toure and Toumani Diabate playing on a CD in the souq. I fell in love with it instantly! Turns out, we were following Richard and Mokhtar to that very store to buy that very CD. “They were going in to buy that CD and you just happened to like it when it was playing over the loudspeaker,” Barbara informed me. I am crazy about this music and am almost haunted by the memories from that day whilst listening to it! I encourage everyone to listen to the album, “In the Heart of the Moon”, which won a Grammy in 2005. Amazing music by these Malian artists. It’s the music I listened to the last half of my trip to Morocco and it’s the CD Mokhtar gave me to remember Morocco by…

And of course, three other songs: Barbara singing the Chinese love song, Mokhtar singing an Arabic prayer, and Marianne and Susan singing a farewell song to our driver, Achmed, on his last day. The latter song made me burst out in tears because of its simplistic beauty. Had I not been so taken off guard, I would have videoed it with my iPhone, like I did inthe excerpts below…

So beautiful…