Taragalte Festival, Morocco

Ismael and his nephew at the Taragalte Festival in the Moroccan Sahara.

Taragalte is a festival in the Sahara desert in the southern Morocco that celebrates the cultural heritage of desert people with a focus on music.  Musicians from the Sahara region gathered to play the stages and also played around the campfire under the stars.  Desert nomads, Tuaregs and locals from nearby villages also came to celebrate the weekend in the desert.

Locals raced their camels, (dromedaries actually), around the festival.

Main stage

These musicians were heating their drums' heads over the fire to tighten them.

Mehdi

Toni and Joan from Spain

Tommy illuminated by a bare bulb in the desert

Local girls

In the main camp area of Taragalte

Some tents among the dunes

A couple policemen look out from a sand dune.  The festival was fairly close to the Algerian border with Algeria.

View from the back of the main stage...the stars were so bright in the Sahara...you could practically see shooting stars streaking across the night sky anytime just by looking up for a minute.

Steep Ravine and SF's Bernal Heights

Sunset at Steep Ravine...

Live music at Tartine Bakery

Brian atop Bernal Heights

View across SF

Do You Realize?

Do you realize?

that everyone you know

someday

will die?

And instead of saying all of your goodbyes

Let them know

You realize that life goes fast

It's hard to make the good things last

You realize the sun doesn't go down

It's just an illusion

Caused by the world

Spinning 'round...

-Flaming Lips

Brian & Audra at Flaming Lips show at Tulsa's Brady Theater

September, 2011

Walking With Giants

Found these images on my hard drive the other day. They are the design layout comprised of my photos from JFJO's 2004 album. I decided to post them as they have never been displayed on the interweb. These photos are from the band's recording session at the University of Tulsa's Tyrell Hall and they are from an era that I can hardly remember - when I was shooting black and white Tri-X film and Fuji color slide film. I'd also like to mention that my brother Brian's band headlines the OK Mozart Festival tomorrow, playing Beethoven's 3rd and 6th symphonies accompanied by a 50-person orchestra. If you are in Okie Land, I recommend that you go check 'em out.

This layout was an initial design and the actual album cover is the one below. The rendition of Sean's Song on this album is so sweet.

jfjo from t-town...in sf soon

These shots are from NYE in Tulsa. My brother's band, the Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey, returns to San Francisco this Friday, Feb. 12th. They play at Coda - on Mission St. a block away from Zeitgeist - and other spots on the west coast before heading to Europe again for the month of March to make their debut in beautiful places like Prague and Sardinia, and returning to Berlin, London, Stockholm, Amsterdam, etc.

At the newly re-opened Eclipse where JFJO recorded their first albums, Live at the Lincoln Continental and Live in Tokyo in the mid-90's

Since I'm feeling a bit nostalgic about touring around Europe with the Fred boys, here's some audio/imagery from my 2nd Euro tour with them from Nov. 2006...

8.8.8

It's the Fred ya'll. My picture of beans from Camp Joy is the album cover. Support JFJO

jfjo euro tour #2

some images from the Nov. '06 travels...

Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport

From hotel window in Berlin...

train window somewhere in germany
more in this series

The Fred in Utrecht

european tour with jfjo #1

In 2006, I started managing my brother's band the Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey full time. In March, after the group debuted at the Blue Note in NYC, we landed in Italy and went on to the Netherlands, Germany and Finland. One of my Italian friends invited me to be part of a group exhibition that he was organizing in Rotterdam and somehow my brother Brian and I both made our artistic debuts in the Netherlands in March '06. Tour managing kept me very stressed and sleep-deprived but I did mange to come away with some pictures from the tour.

JFJO at the Lantaren in Rotterdam

JFJO in St. Mark's Square in Venice
(this picture appeared in some jazz publications)

Piazza di San Marco, Venezia

outside our hotel outside venice. the receptionist was showing the maintenance guy how to prune the trees?

Brian in Bergamo - one of the many cities we visited just because RyanAir flew there.