TANGIER FOR JAZZ Tangier needs to be prowled. Tangier needs to be prowled at night. She’s a city that waits, during daylight hours, for the sun to disappear before she presents you with her true character. There’s very little in Tangier for the average tourist, but there are memories. Maybe it’s these memories that attract visitors. The arms of Hercules holding up the twin pillars, for example. I’m more fond of the memories of the beat writers; their stories of drugs, drink, poetry and vanity, indulgence, illicit sex with little brown Moroccan girls. Lies and thugs and other experiments. It was excellent writing, then, some of the century’s most original work. Now you can sit at the same cafés and read those poets, but there’s no booze being served any more in the town centre. Only old men smoking their kif in pipes, not concerned with anyone else around. I like that about Tangier: the famous filthy past now lost on tourists and drug dealers, illegal immigrants, poor rural newcomers and rich expats. Tangier won’t compromise for the tourists, it doesn’t clean up well like Marrakesh (they call her the Hooker of Morocco, selling herself for anyone). Tangier has kept it all. The vices are still there to be bought. But it’s a little more sleazy now without the eroticism or intrigue of the International Zone. That’s one face of it. The other face is the gentrified, trendy Tangier of artwork and fashion. The new Tangier that wants a reputation for being a rebel, just slightly outside the mainstream, but without the dirt that comes with such a reputation. I took the bus from Marrakesh to Casablanca. That bus is only for the tough ones. It’s full of sweat, yelling and slamming on the breaks every fifty meters, trying to sell you hot peanuts for five hours. I don’t want hot peanuts. Just resting my head against the greasy window trying desperately to fall asleep. I pick up my camera in Casablanca, catch the train north. The train gets in to Tangier late. I’m hungry, so I go looking for some cheap food, then music. The Tanjazz music festival is on. Tangier doesn’t imply Jazz to me, or to anyone, I suspect. Maybe in the 1950’s, but Jazz was big everywhere in the 1950’s, wasn’t it? Now the idea seems incongruous: Jazz in Tangier. But I know Tangier well, and I’m a fiend for live music, so I showed up. Morocco isn’t a very well organized country, Tangier not a very well organised city. So when I go looking for the first show, I’m not surprised that no one has heard of the venue: the Tanjazz club. “Maybe it’s new?” I ask the man at my hotel reception. He just looks at the name again and says “I won’t lie to you. I’ve never heard of it.” I ask the taxi driver, he thinks maybe it’s a club called Tingis. Page 1 2 Return to writing & journalism
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