LimeWire Music Blog

In 1971, rock critic Robert Palmer set out on assignment for Rolling Stone, to track down the writer’s favorite band.  This was years before Palmer had penned his iconic tomes on popular music, Deep Blues and Rock & Roll: an Unruly History, but even then the young musicologist and clarinetist had pretty particular taste.  The object of his infatuation was a group of musicians who had already caught the eye of Brian Jones and William Burroughs.  The later had met the Master Musicians of Jajouka in the fifties, calling them a “four-thousand-year-old rock band.”  According to legend, that’s how long this hereditary clan of musicians in Northern Morocco have been passing along the secrets of their music, from generation to generation.

Almost 40 years later, Palmer’s daughter, Augusta, set out to retrace her father’s journey.  The Hand of Fatima attempts to document both journeys (as well as the connection between them) through documentary footage and animation, as well as illuminating a musical tradition that may in fact predate history.