Inside the Oldest, Most Exclusive Dance Party in the World

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While no one looks at a watch, around midnight each night, the djellaba-clad MMJ take the stage and launch into the first number. The more you listen, the better able you are to pick out something like melody from the seven ghaitas, and if you really focus, you can start to follow some of the pounding polyrhythms. But then the horn leader imperceptibly signals a change, and everything shifts. Is this the same song about the mountain girl? Or have we segued into a number about spiritual devotion? Or is this the cautionary tale about too much hash, a fat wife and three kids you’ve never met?

No matter: You’re back in the hive, and your only job is to unhinge your hips and follow the footwork of the teenage boy you’re no doubt dancing with. All the while, the ghaitas are thrusting you forward. The percussion is pounding inside you. Sweaty? Exhausted? Dance on. Later, much later, you can sleep and dream, then wake up and do it all over again.

I ask Rynne why he puts on the festival. “Once it started it can’t be stopped,” he says. “Each year is unique, a different set of people, a new energy, and the Masters feed off that. By organizing the festival, I get to hear three days of the greatest trance music played live, and no two performances are the same. The only thing each year guarantees,” he concludes with an exhausted half-smile, “is that the Master Musicians of Joujouka will push it a notch more intense than the one before.”