Like Webster's Dictionary....

We're just back from two weeks in North Africa. We went primarily to meet our extended family - my daughter's in-laws - who are Algerians residing in Algiers. Although our daughter has been married for 3 years (and has been to Algeria before) and we've met two aunts who live in the Bay Area, this was the first time that Mrs. DJStan and I got to meet our son-in-law's parents, sister, and other relatives. Let me just say that as expected, knowing him as we do, our son-in-law's family are wonderful people - warm, welcoming, generous to a fault, and lots of fun to be with (and his mother's a great cook, which didn't hurt!). We had a marvelous week with them, and despite the on-going Middle East hostilities and Algeria's fairly recent troubles (they simply call it "the terrorism"), we were treated with courtesy and friendliness by virtually every North African we met.

Since we were heading for North Africa, we also took the opportunity to spend some time in Morocco – mainly in Marrakech, a place I've wanted to visit since CSNY's "Marrakech Express" stroked my ears. It's a fascinating place, particularly the old Medina, a medieval walled city with labyrinthine souks selling everything under the sun, really good food (tagines, couscous, excellent gelato-like ice cream, dates like candy, addictive mint tea, etc.), and lots of ambient sounds. The main square in the Medina is the Djemaa al Fna. It's huge and sparsely populated during the day (although there's always a line-up of carts selling fresh orange juice); this makes sense, because daytime temperatures in Marrakech in July (the low season) run in the low 100's. But when night falls and the temperature drops a bit, it's filled with thousands of people eating at 50 or 60 different food stalls, strolling and chatting, and being entertained by snake charmers, monkey photo op guys, fortune tellers, henna artists decorating women's hands and feet, dancers, play-actors (in Moroccan Arabic only), and of course musicians.

Lots of drum circles, the sounds of reedy horns, ouds and occasionally guitars (and the chicken guy's banjo), chanting and singing all mingling with the noise of dozens of food vendors soliciting business and thousands of Marrakchis and tourists, many of them Moroccans from other parts of the country. I brought home a small horn (the bell IS horn, in fact) bought from an instrument maker/vendor in the souk who established his bona fides by showing me a picture of himself in a folkloric band and playing a little riff on the horn. It's not easy to play for an old string guy like myself. It's got an integral single reed, and I'm not particularly good at getting it to vibrate – but it looks cool, and maybe a reed guy can help me figure it out.

Other sounds of the trip? In Marrakech we stayed at a riad (an inn) in the Medina (Riad Dar Doukkala by name – a splendid small inn with spacious rooms done in art deco Moroccan style, great food, and a very necessary small swimming pool). The Inn is off a noisy street (they all are), but the walls of Medina buildings are very thick and the sound drops off the instant you walk inside. There's a central courtyard, open to the sky, that allows some sounds to come in. For example, there's a call to prayer 5 times a day for Moslems, and each mosque (and there are more than a few in the Medina) has its own caller, although they all chant/recite the same phrases. We could hear the voices from nearby mosques blending together in a range from near basso to pure tenor – and asynchronously, since there's no master clock. I got to look forward to it after a short while (then again, I'm the guy who really dug the bugle-driven day of my brief Army life, so take that into consideration!). Then there was the periodic crowing of a rooster from the live poultry stall a few doors down the block, and the opera piped into the courtyard in the afternoon. Sometimes you’d hear all three at one – muezzins and Mozart accompanied by a rooster; it would make a great loop.

More sounds we encountered included a drum and oud duo (hey - I just realized that "oud duo" is a palindrome!) playing in a Moroccan restaurant in Casablanca; an English pub-style piano bar in the same city where the somewhat raggedy pianist played light Billy Joel (yes, there is such a thing) and Euro-tinged hits from the 70's like "Windmills of Your Mind"; an Algerian wedding singer and band, playing loud and clear on a Thursday night somewhere within range of our hotel room terrace – this was largely great rai-style dance music, with the occasional woman kicking in with the soprano ululations that are characteristic of Berber music; a wedding procession where the flower-bestrewn car carrying the couple was followed by an open truck with a small band playing away as they honked their way through the narrow winding streets of Algiers; three street musicians who simply appeared on my son-in-law's block, banging away on drums and cymbals – you're supposed to toss down a coin or two from your apartment; the sounds of North African hip-hop in a small park with several restaurants and ice cream parlors – three teen-age boys were working on their break-dance moves. Along the same lines, my daughter and son-in-law had both brought their Ipod nanos and an Itrip appliance for playing them over an empty FM slot, so I had the pleasure of listening to Bob Marley and the Wailers ("Babylon by Bus") as we drove to and from the beautiful Mediterranean beaches of Algeria.

Finally, a note on globalization: the French colonial apartment buildings of Algiers have, in recent years, sprouted a forest of satellite dishes – they're everywhere. Thus I had the opportunity to sit in an Algerian living room drinking mint tea and eating dates from the Sahara while watching a Christina Aguilera video broadcast by a Polish music video channel ("Viva Polska!"). BTW, there are 6 McDonald’s in Casablanca; along with selling standard items as well as the McRoyale (per “Pulp Fiction”), they have a product called the “McArabia”, which is some kind of processed meat in a pita. No McCouscous yet, thankfully.