Jemaa El Fna: Morocco's Rendezvous of the Dead Night Music of Marrakech. Sublime Frequencies SF 005. DVD. Color. 50 Minutes. A Film by Hisham Mayet. Shot on Location in Marrakech April 2002. Edited by Richard Bishop and Hisham Mayet. Text notes by Hisham Mayet/Alan Bishop. "This film is one of the most vivid documents ever presented capturing the raw folk stylings of Moroccan music." - From the DVD notes. The camera captures various intimate and relaxed folk music gatherings during one night in Marrakech. Favorite moments include a little girl and her even younger friend performing the astonishing lead vocals in a group chant with a blind string player as well as numerous shots of locals pulling out their seemingly ancient and well used vinyl collections - cleaning them with rags, and tossing them on their turntables. The DVD presentation is clean, letterboxed, with superb sound and lacking in any unecessary pretensions. Preconceptions of this being a Mondo Freak Film should be done away with immediately. On the contrary; the whole package - music and visuals; is utterly honest, compelling and sublime. For the purposes of this review, I wish I could speak with greater authority about the various instruments being played, or of the meanings of the songs being sung - but as all of the performances seem to transcend the very nature of langauge of itself, the very poetic texts that comprise the DVD booklet seem perfect in their presentation of this material. In short, Jemaa El Fna should be of obvious intererest to any Sun City Girls fan and is also highly recommended it its own right. [IL] __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Protect your identity with Yahoo! Mail AddressGuard http://antispam.yahoo.com/whatsnewfree