by Christine Donahue, Trenton, NJ

A long time ago, when I was in Morocco, someone invited the group that I was with to visit a musical group at their camp in the mountains for an evening concert. The group had a reputation of being more a way of life than a band. The group lived together and the children in the village were all trained as musicians. It turns out the legend was true and when we came upon the camp, young boys in skirts were dancing around the fire, as the band played, a prerequisite to becoming a member of the band.

After some time the band invited us in to their house for tea. We sat together and made sign language to each other. Among the chatter of the Arabic and Berber dialects, I looked up toward the ceiling in the room. High up on the wall was a picture of blond european man. I stared at the picture for a long time and finally out loud I said, ‘Brian Jones’. And all the musicians started saying, ‘Brian, Brian’ with great admiration.

Brian Jones had been of friend of theirs and a regular at the camp. At that moment I realized that we really weren’t very different at all.