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A journey from Seattle to the Sahara to join the cyber-hippie culture
Thursday, March 8, 2001
By WINDA BENEDETTI
OUARZAZATE, Morocco -- Ung-chigga, ung-chigga, ung-chigga, ung-chigga, ung-chigga.
Some might consider this torture. A sonic beating. Relentless, inescapable, suffocating. Others consider it transfixing, blissful, spiritual. They travel halfway around the planet just to hear this sound -- this music -- for days on end. They come to dance to it, trance to it, get high-as-a-kite to it.
I have traveled halfway around the globe for this. And now, as I lay in a tent on the edge of the Sahara desert engulfed in this ung-chigga, I'm not sure whether I'm in heaven or hell.
It's time to dance and I feel like dancing almost as much as I feel like climbing Mount Everest in the nude.
I can hear my friends shuffling inside their tents, getting ready for the trek to the dance floor. And if there's one thing I won't do, it's get left behind. I layer on as many clothes as possible. Short-sleeve shirt. Long-sleeve shirt. Jacket. Jacket. Vest. Coat. I envision myself dancing with the stiff grace of a mummy as I step out of my nylon cocoon and into the bitter, impenetrable night.
The 30-degree temperature is just the latest challenge faced by this group of Seattle travelers. We have braved high-pressure snake charmers, eye-searing sandstorms, cultural gaffes and some really nasty toilets, not to mention what seems like an endless string of planes, trains, buses, taxis and cars, just to be here.
Here is about 15 miles outside of a small town called Ouarzazate, in the middle of Morocco, on the Northwest tip of Africa, on the edge of nowhere. It is dry and dusty and rocky. Here is not only cold as hell at night, but -- in a cosmic attempt to even things out -- it's hot as hell during the day. This is certainly one of the last places anyone would ever go for a gigantic dance party.
Yet, here is where "Morocco 2001: A Universal Tribal Gathering" is unfolding. The four-day trance festival will, by the time it's over, draw 3,000 revelers from every corner of the planet.
And it's because this place is one of the last places anyone would ever go for a dance party that we came.
Ung-chigga, ung-chigga, ung-chigga!
I blame JP Bekmann and Paul de Goede for my decision to go to a "trance gathering" in Morocco.
The jigsaw puzzle of images in my head, once pieced together, looked like a Grateful Dead concert crossed with Burning Man, "Casablanca" and "Midnight Express."
Sold!
Trance music and the cyber-hippie culture that surrounds it has become a full-blown global phenomenon, attracting hordes of free-spirited revelers bent on dancing for days on end to music that's complex and cutting edge.
When these people aren't flocking to forests and fields close to home for trance gatherings, many are forking out hundreds and sometimes thousands of dollars to trek to distant countries for giant trance festivals in out-of-the-way places. They talk about these gatherings as though they have almost mystical powers. And many believe that a combination of electronic music, dancing and, sometimes, drugs takes them on a spiritual pilgrimage of sorts.
Landon Fuller, a Seattle trancer, explained it this way: "You take a very restricted-type person, you put them on Ecstasy, set them in a field and play music and in the course of three days of that, more barriers and worries and pains and troubles will be broken down than any other thing you could do -- than years of therapy could fix."
He said trance gatherings have changed his life for the better.
Of course, it's hardly a new concept -- using music, dance and/or drugs to reach a state of enlightenment. In Brazil last year, I watched a Candomble ceremony that dates back hundreds of years to ancient African rites. The participants in this ritual believe that various gods take possession of them when they boogie to the beat. And so, they danced and sang for hours on end until collapsing into herky-jerky bliss.
Watch a bunch of cyber hippies boogie in a forest all night and you can't help but draw a few parallels.
One well-traveled cyber hippie summed it up best: "Travel is the greatest drug."
He was right. And, I admit, I'm an addict. So, like a junkie jonesing for a rush, I grabbed my credit card and my passport and found myself in Morocco.
"It's like a different planet," my traveling partner Richie Costleigh says, staring out the rental-car window as a vast desert landscape slips by us, brown-on-tan-on-red.
One of the things I love about foreign countries is the fact that everything is so darn foreign. Even the banal details become utterly fascinating, supremely enchanting, mind-blowing even.
In Morocco, for instance, there are goats in the trees -- olive trees loaded with black goats that seem like they must have flown to the top branches with invisible wings. They nibble at the olives oblivious to the fact that this is a place for birds, not hoofed beasts.
Fascinated, I pull the rental car to a screeching halt so I can take a picture to prove to people back home that goats do grow on trees in Morocco. The shepherd in charge demands money for the snapshot. I pay him the equivalent of 50 cents.
Even more stunning is the Muslim call to prayer -- bellowing daily from each Mosque spire, reminding Allah's followers to worship. It's so much gibberish to my Western ears and yet, godless heathen that I am, the soulful sound gives me goosebumps.
And the people -- so many people! -- their sun-crinkled faces the color of the desert and the children, beautiful children, always asking for something. One asks for my shoes. Another wants my necklace. They all want money.
The grownups are quick to spot a tourist (pale as notebook paper and carrying enough cash to feed a family for months). They are masters of the hard sell and try to peddle a scarf, a dagger, a rug, a rock, hashish, something, anything. And always it's: "Special price for you!"
The women with blue and maroon robes covering everything but their brown eyes, they grab me, push me down onto a stool and draw intricate webs on my hands with henna. They are exuberant and irresistible and quickly talk Richie into letting them draw on his hands too. Later we notice the Moroccan men chuckling. Henna is for girls, you silly American.
The mint tea -- generously and frequently offered -- tastes like liquid candy.
As we drive across the country -- passing from stony desert to lush green fields to snow-tipped mountains and back to desert again -- we notice road signs with nothing but big red exclamation points on them. These signs have probably been put there to warn of some hazard, but instead seem to declare: Everything in Morocco is an exclamation point!
In a fly-by-the-seat-of-our-pants sort of way, Richie and I had made plans to meet JP, Paul and several other Seattle travelers in Morocco. The demographics of our group looked like this -- six men and three women ranging in age from 18 to 38, four of them currently or formerly employed by Microsoft, three working at dot-coms (InfoSpace and AskMe), one former Boeing contractor and one journalist.
None of us had been to Morocco before. None of us spoke Arabic, although most of us had memorized a few basic phrases -- thank you (shukran) and excuse me (smeh leeya). Milkana Stefanova -- our savior and interpreter -- spoke French, the second language of Morocco and the easier of the two tongues in which to ask important questions such as "Ou est la toilette?"
The vague plan of action went something like this: Meet Paul, JP, Suzette Karlak and Chris Brown at the festival itself. But first, meet Milkana, Kevin MacDonald and Landon at the Cafe Glacier in the center of Marrakech.
Funny thing about plans...
Richie and I met Milkana and Kevin in the center of Marrakech, albeit in the middle of a circle of snakes rather than in a cozy cafe. One snake had wrapped itself around Milkana's neck and another snake had wrapped itself around Richie's neck. That's when things started to turn ugly.
At the center of Marrakech lies an open square named Djemaa el-Fna. In this roiling circus of humanity, food vendors serve up skewers of sheep meat as the animals' cooked skulls grin toothily at passersby.
Onlookers gather in giant circles to watch acrobats flip and tumble or listen as entertainers spin tall tales in shouted animation. Spectators cheer as 10-year-old boys duke it out with boxing gloves. They gape and offer coins to a pair of men who, clothed as female belly dancers, shake their rotund guts to the beat of a drum.
The snake charmers draw huge crowds with their vipers fanned out and ready to strike. Upon closer inspection, it becomes apparent these reptiles are stuporous and perhaps drugged into submission. In short, they're about as menacing as a herd of wet bath towels.
Richie and I were strolling through this spectacle in googley-eyed awe when a snake charmer spotted us for the tourist suckers we were. He quickly pulled us into his circle and draped a few bored reptiles about our shoulders before we had time to protest. And that's where we found Milkana and Kevin -- wearing their own slithering boas.
This was all very amusing until we handed the snakes back and tried to leave. The snake charmer demanded 200 dirham.
"What!? For 30 seconds with a snake? I didn't even ask to be here!" Richie said, offering 20 dirham instead.
The snake charmer was indignant. Richie was indignant. The two men grew increasingly agitated as I fumbled with the math in my head. (OK, 200 dirham equals how many dollars? Hey, that's 20 bucks!)
"Let's just go," Richie said, shoving the 20 dirham at the snake charmer, who tried to block our way as we left and shouted what I assume were insults at our backs.
Lesson learned -- everything in Morocco has a price tag.
One photo of a goat tree: 50 cents.
Thirty seconds with a semi-conscious snake: $20.
Ka-ching!
A Fiat Uno is a tin can of a car about the size of a toaster. With the proper pushing and squeezing, it will hold precisely five people, their backpacks and nothing more. With Kevin at the wheel of our rented toaster, we headed for the highway out of Marrakech and on the road to Ouarzazate.
Moroccans proudly call Ouarzazate the "New Hollywood." It's an overstatement for sure, but it must be said that when big-budget moviemakers need stunning desert scenery, this is one of their favorite places to set up cameras. "Lawrence of Arabia" and "Gladiator" were filmed near here. When we arrived, Brad Pitt and Gerard Depardieu were filming scenes in the area.
It's easy to see why location scouts select this place. The snow-capped Atlas Mountains backdrop a vast desolation that is severe yet stunning, forbidding yet picturesque.
We didn't happen to see Brad or Gerard upon our arrival, but we did find a motley mix of international travelers kicking around town before heading to the festival. What a strange confluence of cultures this was -- Muslim conservatism juxtaposed against the trance scene's rampant bohemianism. Here, travelers decked out in dreadlocks, facial piercings, neon, sparkles and spangles mingled with Moroccans dressed in their demure jellabas -- long robes with pointy hoods that give them the look of wizards.
Both groups eyed each other with a mixture of curiosity, amusement and surprising tolerance.
We made the final haul 15 miles east into the desert and found -- smack dab in the middle of nowhere -- cyber-hippie ground zero.
Here, where a small lake lapped at the cracked desert floor, hundreds of tents bloomed like so many multi-colored mushrooms.
Just beyond the tents, in the middle of the lake, a previously deserted island now sprouted a stage and towering stacks of speakers. At the other end of the island, festival organizers erected a "chill out" area that consisted of several giant tents for people to hang out in and another sound system to play low-key music.
Just for this occasion, the Moroccan army had erected a bridge connecting the shore-side campground to the island dance zone.
We arrived upon this scene just in time for the temperatures to plummet and just as the wind began whipping the abundant grit and sand into a horizontal frenzy. We pitched our tents not far from a group of campers who had unfurled a flag emblazoned with a giant yellow smiley face.
That smiley face would become our homing beacon. It would also become a reflection of the way I felt for the next four days.
Don't get me wrong, the desert accommodations weren't exactly, uhm, comfy. As with most trance festivals, this one was utterly noncommercialized -- no Ticketmaster, no Budweiser sponsorship and, consequently, no professional organization. In fact, the crew in charge -- Akashic Productions -- had never sponsored an event of this magnitude and so they made mistakes.
Big ones and little ones.
Little mistake: Porta Potties were placed so far from the campground it required a half-mile trek to go to the loo. Lacking proper maintenance, these toilets quickly deteriorated into a state so horrendous I will spare you a description.
Big mistake: Broken down and/or undelivered power generators left us stumbling around in the dark on an island surrounded -- no kidding -- by quicksand.
Nonetheless, over the next four days, this empty expanse of desert transformed into an international inhibition-free zone, a mini-city abuzz with such a cacophony of languages it must have sounded like a meeting of the United Nations. Our neighbors to one side hailed from somewhere in Scandinavia. On the other side, camped a crew of friendly Brits.
Hux-Flux, Atmos, X-Dream, Total Eclipse -- these performers (with the help of gargantuan speakers) set a constant rhythm that steamrolled over the dance floor and swept through the campground -- ung-chigga, ung-chigga, ung-chigga. We traipsed between the campground and the dance floor, sleeping when we could (if you can sleep through ung-chigga) and dancing when we felt like it.
"Everyone does their own thing and they're very tolerant," Paul had told me. He was right.
This temporary town brimmed with a kind of freewheeling yet peaceful joviality. When trancers weren't dancing they were catching up with friends they hadn't seen since the last gathering in Germany or maybe Australia or Brazil. The crumbling ruins of an ancient kasbah clung to one end of the island and offered the perfect perch from which to watch the sun rise over the lake.
A lively and friendly drug trade quickly took root.
Heidi from Sweden offered me Valium -- for free -- after hearing me bemoan my inability to sleep through the noise. A petite young Russian woman stopped by our village offering Ecstasy for $10 a hit (one-third the price in America). A British guy from the camp next-door came looking for drugs, as though he was a neighbor asking for a cup of sugar.
Plenty of people did, indeed, indulge in a variety of illegal substances. Acid. Mushrooms. Ecstasy. They are the drugs of choice at gatherings like this.
But it's also worth pointing out that plenty of people didn't. It wasn't about the drugs. It was about the camaraderie, the love, and group hugs were as common as fistfights at Seattle's Mardi Gras free-for-all.
"Drugs enhance the natural euphoria the music gives you," one trancehead explained. They also lend these affairs a crisp edge of surreal absurdity.
Trudging to the distant toilets one morning, I came across a German couple red-faced and zinging on some brain-sizzling substance. They carried between them an unhinged Porta Potti door.
"What are you planning to do with that door?" I asked.
The man responded in a burst of giddy laughter, "We're going to open it up and walk on through to the other side!"
Ta-chink, ta-chink, ta-chink.
The Moroccan men on stage wailed in singsong voices while flap-clapping these crazy metal butterflies in their hands. The tempo, pounded on drums, galloped to a fevered pace while the musicians danced and twirled in fluid synchronicity. The techno hippies watched, enthralled.
These Gnaoua musicians are traditional Afro-Islamic performers who believe their music delivers them into a trance state. As the ta-chink, ta-chink ebbed into the ung-chigga, ung-chigga, their performance on the opening night of the festival served as a reminder that trance music is hardly a new fad.
By late New Year's Eve, the inescapable ung-chigga ung-chigga was starting to grate. I ached for a moment of silence, blessed silence.
"When you spend a night dancing to it, then you'll really understand the music," JP had said. "It takes you, twists you around and sends you up."
So far I had danced in fits and starts. It had been plenty of fun, but not exactly earth-shattering. So, there I was, struggling to drag my cold and exhausted body out of bed and up the hill, for what was supposed to be a climactic night of life-altering electronica.
Yadda yadda, I thought grumpily.
We arrived to find the dance floor packed with smiling, joyous trancers, hundreds of them spinning and jumping and bouncing like a herd of high-strung windup toys impervious to the bitter cold and late hour. And slowly, we were swept into the melee.
We danced and didn't stop, not for hours on end. And sometime around 3 in the morning I found myself overcome with a sense of irrepressible glee.
Suddenly, I was awake, really awake. And I was in the middle of the Moroccan desert -- for crying out loud! Dancing! It was absurd. There was Richie bouncing around in a goofy Cat-in-the-Hat hat. There was Chris with a giant curly wig flopping on his head to the beat. Paul and Suzette hugged and danced, hugged and danced. I kicked up puffs of dust with every step and stomp, bounding like a hyperactive puppy among my friends. I grabbed Landon and it all tumbled from my lips in a flood of hippie-dippy jabber, that in any other setting, would have embarrassed the bejesus out of me.
"Gosh, I've really enjoyed traveling with you. It's been soooo much fun getting to know you and everybody else and I'm really glad we all came to Morocco. What a great adventure!" I said, warm fuzzies practically oozing from my pores.
Landon grinned hugely. "Can I give you a hug?" he asked.
I nodded and returned his embrace. He let go and smiled again before skipping off into the crowd. I returned to the euphoric thunder of the music, my brain buzzing, my body floating.
It wasn't that I had fallen into a trance. I had fallen out of one.
I had escaped that coma-like daze that consumes our everyday lives. I had shed the suffocating normalcy that lulls us into the kind of mindless stupor that makes our days slip by, one after the other, unremarkable in their predictability.
Ung-chigga, ung-chigga, ung-chigga!
P-I reporter Winda Benedetti can be reached at 206-448-8223 or windabenedetti@seattle-pi.com
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER
The sound is so loud that, although we're nearly a mile from the source, I can feel the vibrations tickle the soft place where my spine meets my bum. Ung-chigga. It thumps all night long. Ung-chigga. All day long. Ung-chigga. It shanghais the body's rhythms and demands they step up to the tempo. Ung-chigga! Did I mention LOUD? 
It's 11:30 p.m., it's dark as the devil's heart and the temperature has dipped to freezing. If I could see anything, it would be my own breath and a snot icicle or two dangling from my red nose. Worse, I'm supposed to crawl out of the only warmth I know -- my sleeping bag and my tent -- and hike nearly a mile to a rock-strewn field that's currently passing itself off as a dance floor.
A woman meditates during a quiet moment away from the festival crowds. Photo by Peter Russell.
Click for larger photo A gigantic 'trance gathering'
JP and Paul were computer programmers for Microsoft before they gave up geekdom to travel the world like vagabonds. Back in September, when they still worked for The Man, they told me Morocco 2001 would be no ordinary dance party. The music would be intense and hypnotic, the dancing would thump 'round the clock and I would be among thousands of freaks and geeks from far away countries, running about willy-nilly with no inhibitions and taking drugs to feel all gooey and insightful and at one with the universe and whathaveyou.
Trance devotees danced day and night at the Morocco 2001 gathering. Temperatures sizzled into the 90s during daylight and dipped into the 30s when it got dark. Photo by Peter Russell.
Click for larger photo
I've never been granted a face-to-face interview with any particular god and so, despite eight years of Catholic school, I remain a polite skeptic when it comes to most things otherworldly. Still, I found the prospect of spiritual development -- while unlikely -- a darn good excuse to rack up a few frequent flier miles. Besides, this was Morocco -- a country steeped in mystique. Exotic spices! Camels! Labyrinthine bazaars!
Some 3,000 trance fans from around the world gathered in the Moroccan desert over New Year's Eve for a four-day festival called Morocco 2001: A Universal Tribal Gathering. Giant trance gatherings such as this one are cropping up with increasing frequency around the globe. Photo by Marc Mauger.
Click for larger photo Goats in olive trees
Beware of snake charmers
Cyber-hippie ground zero
Inhibition-free zone
Falling out of a trance
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