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55.
Jilala LP + Typed Postcard Signed.
NY/Tangier: Trance Records, nd. (1966). LP record (TRR 1225). Produced by Ira Cohen from field recordings of trance music by the Jilala, a sect of Moroccan dervishes, made on October 8, 1965 by Brion Gysin (on a portable Martel) and Paul Bowles (on his Uher). Extensive sleeve notes by “I.C.” (Ira Cohen), with 13 photo-portraits of various Jilali musicians.
The name of the album, ‘Jilala’, refers to glory of God, as well as to the 12th-century saint of Baghdad, Moulay ‘Abd el-Quadir el Jilani or ‘Jilali’, and the magenta colour of the record’s labels echoes that of the cover of Ira Cohen’s little magazine Gnaoua, published in Tangier two years earlier and named “after Black African sect in Morocco known for ecstatic dancing and procession trances” (from Cohen’s introduction).
Disc Mint in unopened factory shrink-wrapped sleeve (minor corner wear).
TOGETHER WITH:
a typed postcard signed from Ira Cohen in Tangier to William Levy (co-editor of The Insect Trust Gazette) in Pennsylvania. Approx. 85 words. Accompanied by an airmail envelope postmarked ‘Tanger 14-9 1965’.
Cohen writes: “Received 2 cards from [Robert] Basara [Levy’s co-editor] asking me contact you immediately reference -- blotting paper & space orbit. Yes? I can supply all you want. Can you distribute? Important for immediate secret plans code name Jilala. I want to move several thousand, easy by air mail any quantity”.
It’s not clear precisely when the original recordings were made, but Cohen had been planning the Jilala album for some time and wrote elaborate notes for the sleeve in his Tangier notebook. The tapes were mastered at Stereo Sound Studios in New York City in early 1966 by Jerry Newman (the same studio and engineer that had recorded Jack Kerouac a few years earlier).
