Mrabet is famous as being the close companion and friend of writer and compoder Paul Bowles in Morocco. He is also an accomplished published writer and story teller on his own. These seemingly kif ( a marijuana like leaf) inspired drawings of visions have an amuletic power influenced by the Jilala tribesmen and their music. The same people influenced Burroughs, Gysin and Brian Jones who put out the first recording of the master musicians of Jejouka. There is a night time poetry and mystery in these drawings.
1 comment:
So glad to see some current Mrabet's which means, I hope, he is still drawing (I have a 1975 Mrabet). But he is more than Bowles and Burroughs and kif (although kif is his absinthe). There's something so amazing about his ability to walk the line between the Riffian and the Tangerine; the Moroccan and the "Nazarene" as he puts it; the oral storyteller and the writer and on. His drawings are so intricate and mad. Can we try not to frame him only through Hip Beat culture or is that the essential link that makes him legible? A controversial guy but important to promote as a storyteller, artist, and difficult persona of his own. Thanks.
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