As my spring semester classes in Salamanca, Spain came to an end, I set my sights on a strange land I knew nearly nothing about other than through the films “Babel” and “The Man Who Knew Too Much.” I had a month to travel freely before my Maymester in Hungary began so I went south to Morocco in search of perilous adventure. Leafing through an on flight magazine depicting exotic Moroccan destinations, I envisioned myself outfoxing nefarious, fez-hat-wearing villains in generic cloak-and-dagger scenarios.
    When I first stepped out of the Marrakech airport, I met an Australian traveler my age named Chris. He was sporting a massive backpack, ripped-up jeans, a Jim Morrison t-shirt and a black fedora hat.
    “Hey are you alone?” I asked.
    “Yeah I am.”
    “Well you want to grab a cab?”
    “Yeah man perfect.”
    It was midnight in Marrakech, and neither one of knew what we were doing at all. It was only natural that we join forces. We waved down a taxi and headed for the market, where we found a cheap hostel for the night. On the taxi ride I commented on my terrible body odor, having used up the rest of my deodorant days earlier. A second later he exclaimed “God that’s terrible!” and rolled the window down. He proved to have a great sense of humor, as well as a kind-hearted and laid-back attitude that made traveling a pleasure.
    I had worried that traveling in a Muslim country would be difficult for me as an American, especially since I had been pigeonholed as such all over Spain. But my suspicions were allayed as I found the greatest concern for a tourist was the fast-paced, frenzied commotion of aggressive market peddlers. The market square is by far the most distinguishable and memorable feature of Marrakech; it is the biggest and busiest market in all of Africa. It is easy to get lost amidst the rising smoke, exotic smells, countless vendors and myriad entertainers scattered about.
    Many people in the country make their living as intermediaries between tourists and local businesses. Unless you want to be constantly approached while wondering around you have to completely avoid eye contact or have a guide. On our third day in town Chris and I were venturing through the market looking for a fruit stand when we met two locals of college age, Chafik and Habeeb, who offered to show us around for free.
    Both of them were originally from Essaouira, a surfing town where Jimi Hendrix visited a commune in the 1960s. It is widely believed in Morocco that Hendrix and his hippie followers lived on the commune until it was shut down by the authorities. After the community was forced to disband, the story goes, Hendrix forged one of his most famous song lines, “And so castles made of sand fall in the sea eventually,” referencing the tragedy of the experience.
    During my month in Morocco, people frequently mentioned Hendrix to me, usually as an inducement to buy something from them. (Though Chafik and Habeeb weren’t selling anything, they still believed the legend was true.) Even a menial amount of sleuthing reveals the story as mostly a hoax, based on a two week visit Hendrix made in July of 1969, two years after “Castles Made of Sand” was released. During his visit, he hopped between upscale hotels in his rented limo and stayed only a few days in Essaouira. But this brief visit nearly forty years ago is still used to attract tourists to “hotels where Hendrix stayed” and camel rides down the coast to “the actual location of the commune.”
    Chafik was of Berber origin, spoke Arabic, Berber, French, English, and Spanish, and was studying to be a veterinarian at a local university. His English wasn’t perfect, but he communicated well and laughed at the novelty when I said when we met, “What’s up dude?” Habeeb was an Arab who spoke Arabic, English, and a little Berber. He wasn’t in school and didn’t have a formal job, but in the week that we spent with him he would periodically disappear to “meet people.” I had thought maybe he was going to pray but noticed that when the market loud speakers sounded the call to prayer, he appeared unaffected. He had an unstated bitterness towards French colonialism in Morocco, which I gathered from his having deliberately not learned French, his love of Bob Marley, and the opinions he offered in our conversations.
    Both of them sang softly in Arabic as they guided us through endless market alleyways or while we enjoyed mint tea on a balcony overlooking the bustling bazaar. I once asked Habeeb what the lyrics to a song meant, and he said, “It’s about a woman who hid in the Atlas Mountains when the French were here. She just stayed in the mountains where the French never came and was happy.” I expressed interest in the music, so they guided me and Chris into the market to have a look. We came to a group of musicians rattling away at their drums and clapping their metal castanets while tapping their feet and dancing.
    “This is Gnawa music,” Chafik said. I replied that I had seen it before in the market.
    “Yes, but this is not real Gnawa. This is just for tourists.”
    “Well, what’s the real Gnawa then?” I said.
    “It’s trance music. I will show you.”
    The next morning Chris and I rented a car for a road trip we planned to make through the Atlas Mountains down to the Sahara. We met with Chafik and Habeeb for lunch in the afternoon, and they told us that about 20 miles outside of Marrakech there was going to be a Gnawa ritual we could go to, but we would need a car. I told him we had rented one, and we made plans to rendezvous later that night.
    Around midnight, Chris, Habeeb, Chafik, and I were crowded in the white two-door Fiat cruising down a dark stretch of highway. During the car ride I tried to learn whatever I could about this mysterious music we were about to witness.
    “So where is Gnawa from?” I asked.
    “Gnawa are people from below the Sahara, around Kenya. They were slaves a long time ago, and now Gnawa is the name of their music,” Habeeb said. His father, a musician, introduced him to the music when he was very young. Both Habeeb and Chafik played the instruments used in Gnawa and sang Gnawa songs though they had rarely participated in the rituals.
    “Does it have anything to do with Islam?” I asked.
    “No, it is not from Islam. It is spirits,” said Chafik.
    “So it’s related to Sufism?”
    “Yes but it is mixed with slave music. The Gnawa are healers. They heal with spirits. You will see.”
    I later learned that Gnawa generally practice Islam. They are known to employ many Sufi elements in their healing rituals but are certainly not adherents to mainstream Sufism either. The Gnawa musicians are basically in a group of their own: free-wheeling musicians who tour the country as mediators between the material and spiritual worlds. They believe their music appeases harmful spirits and blesses humans with restorative ones.
    We had to maneuver dirt roads before we arrived in a small village amidst the utter darkness of the remote desert. Chafik and Habeeb exchanged words with a few nighttime street stragglers and we weaved around muddy passageways until we came to a two-story concrete building with a wooden door. I could hear commotion inside but no music. We knocked on the door and were let into the crowded entryway. Our guides announced they had brought an Australian and an American. An old man began laughing through a toothless grin and gave me and Chris a wet kiss on the cheek. Everybody in the cramped hallway laughed at the awkwardness of the moment. We were happy to be received so well.
    The hallway led to an area of open air nestled between several other concrete buildings. The Gnawa troupe was lined up against one side of the wall, and the crowd was circled around the performers. This particular Gnawa troupe was led by a master gimbri player, who acts as the instrumental, vocal, and spiritual leader through the ritual. The gimbri is like a three string low-toned bass that the troupe leader plays in a droning, hypnotic rhythm. The master musician is accompanied by eight players of the qraqeb, large metal cymbals or castanets that keep a polyrhythmic, clamorous beat that will occasionally change without warning.
    The music began, and the master musician sang a line in Arabic, which the crowd answered. The gimbri seemed to be mimicking the melody of the song, while the audience clapped to the rhythm of the castanets. Everyone in the crowd knew the words to the songs, and it wasn’t long before people stood up on a carpet in the middle of the atrium that was facing the music group. Chafik had told me it was trance music, but I couldn’t picture a dancer in a trance until I saw it that night.
    A girl who appeared to be in her early twenties was the first to fall into a trance. She was wearing a hooded robe over dark pants, and an old woman had to come and wrap a scarf around her waist to contain her movements. She would have marched aimlessly through the musicians if she weren’t being held in place by the old woman. She nodded her head violently and flailed her arms with an elaborate cadence that gave form and beauty to the chaos of her motion.
    It must have been twenty minutes of dance before the girl passed out. The old woman that had been holding her back caught her and lowered her onto the carpet in front of the troupe. They began chanting, and a man that had been dancing with a big stick in his hand pulled out a green apothecary bottle bound in silver and dripped some of the contents onto the girl. The band played on, and the girl eventually crawled over to the opposite wall and put her head in the old woman’s lap.
    The band played for two hours before their first break, but not before several other people in the crowd entered into this trance like state. The droning repetition of the music seemed to be hypnotizing people onto the carpet; they would flail their limbs wildly until they could no longer stand. Curious and confused, I asked Chafik during the break what was happening.
    “How are these people going into a trance?” I said.
    “It is the spirits. The troupe calls spirits with the music and the people dance when they have the spirit in them.” Chafik answered.
    “Well will the spirit enter me? Can I go into a trance?”
    “No, never. You can never have the spirit. I can never have the spirit. Chris—never. Habeeb—never.”
    “But why?” I inquired desperately.
    “Because you can’t see the color of the song. When they see the color, they dance and the spirit takes them. You can never have the spirit if you don’t see the color.”
    He was certainly right about that. I had never seen the color of any song, so I had my doubts that I would ever have the spirit. It was upsetting to think that I could be so culturally removed from these people, that I could never come close to experiencing a song they way they did. Chafik and Habeeb could sing and play all the songs and had lived in Morocco their entire lives, but even they couldn’t see the color.
    We talked outside the building, waiting for the music to start again. At one point, a man that had been inside came up to me offering a bag full of some grainy looking substance. He said something to Chafik in Berber.
    “He wants to know if you would like some Berber cocaine.”
    “Probably not,” I replied with a grin. I later found out it was the vernacular for snuff.
    We went back into the building when the music resumed and watched the ritual performance until sunlight from the horizon began to form shadows around us. After the music ended, we thanked everyone around us and headed back to the Fiat. The brilliant sunrise followed us on our drive back to the city, where we slept at the hostel in Marrakech the rest of the day.
    The more I thought about the ritual experience, the more I understood my inability to see or experience this color. The Gnawa musicians and participants have been involved with this tradition their entire lives. It has become like a language to them. Generally speaking, learning to play an instrument or speak a language is infinitely harder when begun at a later stage in one’s life. But as a child these things come to us so naturally and effortlessly that we hardly realize we are learning. Could it not be that in order to experience this color I would need a lifetime of early exposure to the Gnawa way of life? Perhaps all I really needed was an unquestioning faith in the efficacy of the Gnawa and their music. Though I watched every move of the troupe with overwhelming awe, I saw no color, and certainly never felt hypnotized beyond my conscious will. More than anything, I was just grateful that my guides exposed me to such an interesting and esoteric part African culture. It was an experience I will never forget.
    Months later I met a friendly Moroccan on a train to Berlin. I told him I had seen a Gnawa performance, to which he scoffed condescendingly. Yet he fully believed the Hendrix myth. The bitter irony! That such a beautiful cultural expression could be derided as crazy while this mythical creation remained a widely accepted point of pride seemed bizarre to me. It would seem to me that even someone who hated the mystical aspect of Gnawa would find the music moving, but this man wanted nothing to do with it. I am comforted even now, thousands of miles from Morocco, that there are people like Chafik and Habeeb who can find something to appreciate in everything, even though part of it may seem mysterious or difficult to understand.