Jilala HD

Direct Vinyl Rip "Jilala" (Trance Records 1966) https://www.discogs.com/Jilala-Jilala/release/3045818 Abu Yazid Al-Bestami, a noted Sufi Saint, once asked Moulay Abdelkader to call a tree which stood between them in the road-Call the tree three times in the name of the Prophet, and then I too will call the tree. Then we shall see for whom the tree will move. After calling three times with no result, Moulay Abdelkader waited for Bestami to make his call and Lo! on the third attempt the tree began to move until it came to Bestami. Moulay Abdelkader cried out-I am not yet close enough to Allah-and he went up into the mountains where he stood for forty years on one foot in an attitude of prayer and waiting. One day an angel came down to him and said: Moulay Abdelkader, put your foot down. And Moulay Abdelkader replied: For whom should I do this? "For those who are living and for those who are not yet living," answered the angel. And then did Moulay Abdelkader put his foot down to the ground. But so many years of holding his foot up caused it to rise again from the ground as soon as it touched and as his foot bounced up, all the disciples of Moulay Abdelkader rushed around him in great joy beating their drums and joined him in the celestial dance of his deliverance. And this the Jilala say was the beginning of their ritual of ecstatic dancing. The Jilala, like the other religious brotherhoods of Morocco, is probably rooted in pre-Islamic ritual and celebration, but it is at the same time definitely a part of the great Sufi tradition of the Middle East. An off-shoot of the Kadiree order which was begun in Baghdad in the twelfth century by Moulay Abdelkader Ghailani or Jilali as he is often called in the Maghreb-the Jilala is an order of dervish musicians known for their practice of trance dancing and spiritual healing. They are called upon to exorcise evil spirits and to purify the heart. The Jilala are particularly useful in curing cases of epilepsy and hysteria, controlling the spirits or demons in possession of the subject through their music and the ritualized gestures of the dance. But mainly the dances are dances of exaltation. Paul Bowles writes in a short story, The Wind at Beni Midar, "A Jilali can do only what the music tells him to do. When the musicians play the music that has the power, his eyes shut and he falls on the floor. And until the man has shown proof and drunk his own blood the musicians do not begin the music that will bring him back to the world." The dancers come as they are called by the music; and their number varies with the size of the gathering and the place, including both men and women, the very old and the very young. Incense is burned throughout the evening; and the smell of black jowee or benzoin heightens the trance state and is often used to revive a dancer who has passed out. The women characteristically weave and bob back and forth to the music, spreading their arms and then crossing them over their breasts.