The score for ‘Only Lovers Left Alive’ was a collaboration between Dutch lute player Jozef Van Wissem, who was living in Brooklyn at the time, and the rock band SQÜRL (Jim Jarmusch, Carter Logan, and Shane Stoneback). The music aims to reflect the different environmental structures and atmospheres of the cities Detroit and Tangier. Old and modern sounds connect and are intertwined in time.
The film’s music was released worldwide on record in 2014 and won a Cannes Soundtrack Award. The album remained a favorite among critics and fans in the following years. However, the number of copies in circulation was limited. This changed in 2021. The label Sacred Bones released a reissue on CD and double LP (including Clear Red Splatter vinyl) alongside a digital version of the album.
The New York Times previously wrote about Jozef Van Wissem that he is “both an avant-garde composer and a baroque lutenist, and thus no stranger to dichotomy”. In other words: Jozef Van Wissem manifests himself in two musical worlds, which, despite their differences, are equal to him. He is an ideal person to make musical connections.
On the bridge between industrial Detroit and North African Tangier, there is a constant coming and going. Van Wissem’s avant-baroque lute weaves through the layered cinematic tapestry of ‘Only Lovers Left Alive’ with screeching, twenty-first-century guitar noise, heavy rhythm hits, captivating Moroccan ‘Streets Of Tangier’ percussion, synthesizer-generated bass loops, field recordings, and a variety of sonic effects. Guest vocalist Madeline Follin of the New York duo Cults is heard in SQÜRL’s gritty, gothic reinterpretation of the Wanda Jackson hit ‘Funnel of Love’. The voice of Zola Jesus (who has worked with the lutenist more often) floats beautifully ethereal through Van Wissem’s ‘In Templum Dei’. The psychedelic drive of ‘Please Feel Free To Piss In The Garden’ echoes the Rolling Stones ‘Steel Wheels’ song ‘Continental Drift’, in which they collaborate with the Master Gnawa Musicians of Jajouka. And Lebanese singer and actress Yasmine Hamdan brings an intimate, Arabic-colored contribution with ‘Hal’, recorded on the set of the film and later mixed by SQÜRL.
These are all fine and convincing contributions. But the absolute living soul of ‘Only Lovers Left Alive’ is nonetheless formed by Jozef Van Wissem and his lute. The musician is a virtuoso who is capable of igniting dreams (and probably vampires) into life with his refined play. He lets his music blaze in instrumental enthusiasm, connects worlds, and effortlessly couples the past to the present. Thereby, traditionally inspired melodies and modern soundscapes written for the film alternate in an elegant manner and create passionate poetry. For Lovers Only? For anyone who wants to listen.
Jozef Van Wissem & SQÜRL – Only Lovers Left Alive
Sacred Bones / Konkurrent
Marrakesh Express
The musical north-south bridge that runs on ‘Only Lovers Left Alive’ between Western rock music and Morocco is, however special, not new. A well-known example from the past is the song ‘Marrakesh Express’ by Crosby, Stills & Nash, written by Graham Nash. It was featured on their debut album ‘Crosby, Stills & Nash’ from 1969. It was the first single they released. The song achieved worldwide chart success. The inspiration for the Moroccan theme came from a train journey, ‘Express’, that Graham Nash took in 1966 from Casablanca to Marrakesh.
Take the train from Casablanca going south
Blowing smoke rings from the corners of my mouth
Colored cottons hang in the air
Charming cobras in the square
Striped djellebas we can wear at home Well, let me hear you now
Wouldn’t you know we’re riding on the Marrakesh Express
Morocco has always exerted a huge attraction on artists. From all over the world, they were drawn to the call of total freedom (and drugs) that especially emanated from Tangiers – the city had an international status from 1912-1958. From Mark Twain to Henri Matisse and Francis Bacon and from Gertrude Stein to Errol Flynn and writers of the beat generation like William S. Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, and Jack Kerouac, all spent shorter or longer periods in Morocco. The American writer Paul Bowles even settled there. And then there were the sixties and rhythm & blues and rock & roll and the Rolling Stones made trips to Morocco, where Brion Gysin owned a small restaurant cum nightclub. There, Brian Jones met the master musicians from the small mountain town of Jajouka who regularly played in Gysin’s restaurant. At a certain point, the establishment mysteriously caught fire and was destroyed. Gysin took Jones into the southern Rif mountains to get to know the musicians with their characteristic flutes – the rhaita, an oboe-like shawm and also the instrument of the shepherd god Pan – and drums better. He recorded an album with them that would later become known as ‘Brian Jones Presents The Pipes Of Pan At Jajouka’. Thereby, the prematurely deceased Rolling Stone was one of the first to recognize and bring to a wider audience the expressive power of the ritual trance music of Morocco’s Berber population.
Trance
The Gnawa brotherhood is an Islamic, religious order of musicians attributed with healing powers. The members are descendants of black Africans who were brought in by the Arabs from Ghana, Guinea, Mali, Senegal, and Niger in earlier times and made into slaves and soldiers. Their followers live scattered throughout Morocco but are mostly found in the south of the country, particularly in Marrakesh. The brotherhood claims spiritual descent from Sidi Bilal, an Ethiopian who was the first muezzin of the Prophet himself. Gnawa musicians believe that each individual has a special color and tone that he or she responds to when the musician plays the guimbri or sentir. This lute, with its notably long neck, resembles certain instruments from West Africa where a special kind of triads are played – rock guitarist Jimi Hendrix was so charmed by the guimbri that he made several trips to Morocco in the late sixties to get to know the instrument better. To enhance the effect of the guimbri, hypnotic rhythms are played with metal, plate-shaped castanets, and a large, round drum is often used as well.
The gnawa master (maleem) strives for perfection, because one incorrectly played note can nullify the healing and purifying powers of the music. Gnawa is used to help people who have fallen into spiritual trouble, but it can also be called upon for the beneficial effects of the trance music if someone has been bitten by a snake or stung by a scorpion. Furthermore, the music is used to praise God and with Him the spirits of the saints.
Gnawa is music that travels. The American writer Paul Bowles once got hold of a tape with music from Niger. He played the music to a Moroccan who was very proud of the trance music from his country and noted that he found the music quite similar to gnawa. To which the man exclaimed: ‘It resembles gnawa? It is gnawa!’
Music on the old road to Marrakesh
Brian Jones Presents The Pipes Of Pan At Jajouka
Rolling Stone Brian Jones added psychedelic effects to the trance music of the master musicians of Jajouka, once tongue-in-cheekly labeled by William Burroughs as “a four-thousand-year-old rock-‘n-roll band”. The Rolling Stone created, together with the traditional musicians, a sound that is fiercely exciting, full of undulating bass lines and ecstatically piercing fanfares that cut through the drum rhythms like a knife.
Rolling Stones: Steel Wheels
Just one song, but what a song. In ‘Continental Drift’, the patriarchs of British rock & roll join forces with the Master Gnawa Musicians of Jajouka to return to the place where Brian Jones once saw the psychedelic light. Moroccan drum sounds and the shrill tones of the rhaita elevate rock & roll to a higher level.
Gnawa Music of Marrakesh: Night Spirit Masters
Recorded in the medina of Marrakesh and produced by New Yorker Bill Laswell, ‘Night Spirit Masters’ offers Moroccan music at its trance-best.
Maleem Mahmoud Ghania & Pharoah Sanders: The Trance Of Seven Colors
Maleem Mahmoud Ghania (1951-2015) was one of Morocco’s most famous gnawa masters. Here, the Moroccan musicians are joined by the American saxophonist Pharoah Sanders (1940-2022), who once played with John Coltrane and whose overtones can be fierce.
