The Authorized Paul Bowles Web Site

PAUL BOWLES: GALLERIES OF PHOTOGRAPHS

LITERARY FRIENDS, Part Three

Although Paul Bowles was loathe to be considered a Beat writer and not particularly an admirer of the Beats' writings, he did inspire several of the major Beat Generation writers including Allen Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs to go to Morocco. In 1957 Ginsberg and Burroughs first arrived in Tangier. Initially, Allen Ginsberg was snubbed by Jane Bowles, and in 1959 Paul Bowles finally met Burroughs and Ginsberg, the most prominent members of the so-called Tangier Beat scene. In 1961, Gregory Corso, another important Beat Generation figure also went to Tangier, and along with William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, they lived and wrote at the Villa Muniria, a guesthouse not far from the Boulevard Pasteur.

The painter and writer Brion Gysin first met Jane Bowles and later Paul Bowles in Paris in 1938. They became reacquainted with Gysin again in Paris during the spring of 1950, and the Bowleses invited Gysin to visit them in Tangier. He arrived in Tangier in July 1950, staying for several months as a houseguest of Paul and Jane Bowles in their modest house in the upper medina.

Also shown here are photographs of the writers and novelists Truman Capote, Gore Vidal and John Hopkins, in addition to several of Beat poet, writer and photographer Ira Cohen and his son Raphael Aladdin Cohen.


William S. Burroughs		Allen Ginsberg

Brion Gysin

The painter and writer Brion Gysin first met Jane Bowles, and later Paul Bowles, in 1938 in Paris, where the Bowleses had spent some time during their lengthy honeymoon travels. They encountered Gysin again in Paris in the spring of 1950, when Paul Bowles invited him to visit them in Morocco. In July 1950 Gysin arrived in Tangier, staying as a guest for several months in Jane and Paul Bowles's small house near Place Amrah in the upper medina. Paul Bowles introduced Brion Gysin to Mohamed Hamri, an 18-year-old illiterate smuggler, who was born in Ksar-el-Kebir, and who had travelled by train to Tangier. Wanting to help Hamri, who was Gysin's boy friend, Gysin bought Hamri his first paints and taught him painting techniques. They shared a bedroom on the second floor at the Bowleses' house. However, while Paul Bowles was away on a trip, Hamri took various of Bowles' personal belongings, including the suit he wore at his wedding to Jane, all of which ended up in a Tangier flea market. The last straw occurred when Hamri also stole an expensive new radio. This caused a rift between Bowles and Gysin, and they did not speak with each other for a few months. When Bowles's chauffeur Mohammed Temsamany and Ahmed Yacoubi confronted Hamri, Gysin abruptly moved to a cottage on the Marchan. Gysin and Bowles later had a reconciliation and remained friends for many years thereafter.

During one early memorable trip with Paul Bowles to a moussem held at a beach near Sidi Kacem, several miles outside of Tangier, Brion Gysin first heard some particularly fascinating Moroccan Sufi trance music. Later, Gysin learned from his friend Mohamed Hamri that the musicians were from a small tiny mountain village called Jajouka. Gysin eagerly went to the village with Hamri to learn about this which so intrigued him. Hamri's mother's native village was Jajouka, but later moved to nearby Ksar-el-Kebir. Hamri was not born in Jajouka but in Ksar-el-Kebir; however as a child he had spent some time visiting relatives in Jajouka. The village was also the home of his mother's first husband who had been one of the musicians. In Brion Gysin's book The Process (New York: Doubleday, 1969), his friend Hamri was made into a real-life character named Hamid. (It should be pointed out that Gysin had first spelled and pronounced the name of the village as Joujouka, but in his later writings and references he used the commonly accepted spelling of Jajouka. This is also the case with William S. Burroughs who originally used and published articles about the Master Musicians of Joujouka, but who later changed his spelling to Jajouka. On the other hand, Mohamed Hamri. who could not write or spell, always used to pronounce the village as " Joujouka." Later, Mohamed Hamri, with the help of his American-born wife Blanca Nyland, who wrote for him, published his version of the legends from this tiny village and its ancient master musicians in a booked entitled Tales of Joujouka (Santa Barbara, California: Capra Press, 1975).

Hamri did indeed have a role to play by bringing his friend Brion Gysin to this village, and later Gysin introduced Brian Jones to the village, and thus to the attention of the West. Hamri's role is not disputed, and Hamri was certainly an accomplished artist and painter (his calling card read "Hamri, the painter of Morocco"). But it must be made clear that Hamri was never a musician, nor ever a part of the original group (led at the time by Bachir Attar's father, Hadj Abdesalam Attar), which, in any case, is at least 1,300 years old. (William Burroughs wrote 4,000 years). From 1954 to 1958, the master musicians performed on a rotating basis at the 1001 Nights restaurant in Tangier, and they also served the food. Hamri was the cook but he did not establish this restaurant. Brian Gysin was only one of several co-founders, as there were other financial backers. When Gysin was fired in January 1958 from his job as manager of the 1001 Nights in Tangier, he returned to Paris, France.

Brian Jones recorded music from Jajouka in 1968 and this was released by the Rolling Stones two years after his death in 1971 as Brian Jones Presents the Pipes of Pan at Joujouka. At the time of the 1968 recording of the Pipes of Pan, the Master Musicians were led by Bachir Attar's father. The LP album did have as its original cover artwork by Mohamed Hamri, but the Rolling Stones later decided that Bachir Attar and The Master Musicians of Jajouka should be granted the rights and full permission to re-release Rolling Stones' lead guitarist Brian Jones' s original music of the Pipes of Pan and the spelling was corrected to Jajouka and a new cover was designed. There is nothing controversial about that. (A so-called Joujouka band has recorded only on the Sub Rosa label, based in Belgium, and it must not be confused with the true group of Master Musicians of Jajouka, led by Bachir Attar, or with another Joujouka band from Japan). Bachir Attar is today, as William Burroughs clearly stated, the only rightful hereditary leader of this first world music group from Morocco, and Bachir Attar is the one who is truly carrying on the legends, legacy and traditions of these Master Musicians for the world to enjoy. For further details, read this eight-page letter explaining facts and details of Mohamed Hamri's and outsiders' meddling and negative influences on The Master Musicians of Jajouka official Web site.

In 1954, Gysin managed a popular Tangier restaurant, the 1001 Nights, located in a wing of the Menebhi palace on the Marshan. Hamri was the cook, and Gysin hired the musicians from Jajouka (Joujouka) to perform and serve during dinners. The restaurant permanently closed in January 1958, when Gysin was fired by Mary Cooke, one of the restaurant's several financial backers, and Gysin left Tangier and first moved to London and eventually to Paris.

After returning to France in 1958, Gysin moved into a cheap, unnamed, 42-room hotel frequented by writers and artists, later referred to as "The Beat Hotel", located at 9, rue Git-le Coeur on the Left Bank or Latin Quarter. Its rooms were dimly lit and without telephones or carpets. Gysin lived at this hotel in Paris for a number of years. In Paris Gysin also began a series of collaborations with William Burroughs and Gregory Corso. Gysin and mathematician Ian Sommerville also co-invented and constructed the first Dreamachine in the early 1960s.

Back in Morocco in 1967, Brion Gysin introduced the music of Jajouka (which Gysin and Hamri spelled and pronounced Joujouka) to his friend Brian Jones, considered to be the founder of the Rolling Stones rock group. In the summer of 1968 Jones recorded an LP album entitled Brian Jones Presents the Pipes of Pan at Joujouka, released in 1971. Gysin would later change his spelling of the village and group's name to Jajouka in his subsequent writings, as did William Burroughs and others.

In 1995, The Rolling Stones granted to Bachir Attar the rights to re-release this legendary, original Brian Jones recording as Brian Jones Presents the Pipes of Pan at Jajouka. Bachir Attar's father, Hadj Abdesalam Attar, who died in 1981, was the undisputed leader of the Master Musicians when Brian Jones made his legendary recording in 1968.

Jane Bowles, Joseph A. McPhillips III, William Burroughs, Unidentified, Paul Bowles: Tangier, 1963.

(Left to right) The mathematician Ian Sommerville (who worked with Brion Gysin on the Dreamachine in the 1960s), writers William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Paul Bowles (holding the camera), and Gregory Corso at the villa El Muniria, Tangier, July 1961 (Photograph copyright © by the Allen Ginsberg Trust and used with permission)

Gore Vidal

Writer and novelist Gore Vidal was an occasional visitor to Paul Bowles in Tangier. Vidal's introduction to a 1979 reissue of Bowles's collected stories sparked a revival of interest in his writings. Vidal wrote about Bowles: "His short stories are among the best ever written by an American.... As a short story writer, he has had few equals in the second half of the twentieth century."

Truman Capote

Writer and novelist Truman Capote with Jane Bowles at El Farhar, a small hotel on the Old Mountain that was run by Ellen and the Winthrop Buckingham. Sidi Masmoudi, Tangier, 1949.

In 1978 Capote wrote an introduction to Jane Bowles's My Sister's Hand In Mine.

John Hopkins

After travels in South America, the Princeton-graduate John Hopkins went to Tangier and accepted a teaching job at the American School of Tangier. During the over 20 years he lived in Tangier, John Hopkins' many friends included Paul Bowles, Jane Bowles, Joe McPhillips, Marguerite McBey, The Hon. David Herbert, Tennessee Williams, William Burroughs, Brion Gysin, Alfred Chester and Mohammed Mrabet. He also made many trips throughout Morocco. After his 1979 wedding to Ellen Ann Ragsdale, Hopkins and his wife settled in Oxfordshire, England.

John Hopkins is the author of six novels: Tangier Buzzless Flies, The Flight of the Pelican, In the Chinese Mountains, The Tangier Diaries: 1962-1979, All I Wanted Was Company and The South American Diaries, 1972-1973.

Ellen Ann Ragsdale with Paul Bowles, her parents, and Malcolm Forbes, the billionaire publisher of Forbes magazine, who owned Palais Mendoub on the Marshan. This photograph was taken in June 1979, at the time of her wedding to writer and novelist John Hopkins at Tangier's Saint Andrew's Church.

Ira Cohen

Ira Cohen first travelled to Tangier in 1961 on a Portuguese freighter, and he lived there until 1965. Cohen produced and published one issue of Gnawa, a magazine introducing several works of Brion Gysin, William Burroughs and Harold Norse. He also produced Jilala, an LP of trance music performed by a sect of dervishes, that was recorded by Paul Bowles. In 1986, Ira Cohen returned to Tangier, and visited the city again in 1990.

In this early-1960s picture, Paul Bowles and Ira Cohen sit at the Café Central in the Soco Chico in the medina of Tangier.

Robin Maugham

Robin Maugham, a nephew of W. Somerset Maugham, was a part-time resident of Tangier. Among his works are The Wrong People, set in Tangier.

Part One; previous (Part Two); next (Part Four); return to galleries listing.

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