Paul Bowles and Brion Gysin first heard the ancient music of the Master Musicians of Jajouka when they attended a moussem (a religious festival) near Sidi Kacem, held at a beach on the Atlantic not far from Tangier. Gysin was a painter and writer and had moved from Paris to Tangier in July 1950, He became fascinated and almost obsessed with this music. Gysin learned from his friend and protégé, Moroccan artist Mohamed Hamri, that the music originated from the tiny Moroccan village of Jajouka, several kilometers west of Ksar-el-Kebir, a town in northern Morocco, and Gysin eagerly travelled there with Hamri.

Brion Gysin introduced this legendary Sufi trance music to his friend Brian Jones, lead guitarist and the founder of The Rolling Stones group, who later recorded an LP album in Jajouka in the summer of 1968. Brian Jones Presents the Pipes of Pan At Joujouka was released in 1971, after Jones's untimely death.

In 1995, The Rolling Stones granted the rights to Bachir Attar and The Master Musicians of Jajouka to re-release the original 1968 Brian Jones recording on CD as Brian Jones Presents the Pipes of Pan at Jajouka. (Gysin originally misspelled the name of the village and musicians as "Joujouka", as did William Burroughs at first, perhaps because Gysin's illiterate partner Mohamed Hamri had called it "Joujouka"; Most revealing is the fact that both Gysin and Burroughs later in life consistently used the much-preferred spelling of Jajouka.) And significantly, both Paul Bowles and William S. Burroughs clearly and unambiguously endorsed only the Master Musicians of Jajouka led by Bachir Attar. You may read the letter signed by William Burroughs on the documents page of the official site for the Master Musicians of Jajouka.

Contrary to misinformation on the Web, Paul Bowles did not record any music or musicians from Jajouka as part of what later became The Paul Bowles Music Collection at The Library of Congress. Bowles made those recordings at various times and places in Morocco between 1959 and 1962, not in the late 1940s. Paul Bowles did not immortalize Mohamed Hamri in The Spider's House; however, Brion Gysin did make a character out of him in his novel The Process. Other points which should be clarified, to avoid confusion, is the fact that Mohamed Hamri was not a musician but a painter, that he stole money intended for the musicians, and that he was born in Ksar-el-Kebir, Morocco not in Jajouka. The only controversy in this matter is what was and still is being stirred up and perpetrated by biased meddling outsiders.