The Master Musicians of Jajouka with Bachir Attar. Photo by Cherie Nutting, from group website.

The Master Musicians of Jajouka were “discovered” by Beat-generation writer Brion Gysin, and later visited by Brian Jones and Timothy Leary on their lysergically-inclined wanderings around Morocco in the 1960s. Leary famously remarked that he had “found” a “four thousand year old rock and roll band” in the foothills of the Rif Mountains below Tangier. While the group’s history remains contentious and questions about their roots still linger (Philip Schuyler’s article “Joujouka/Jajouka/Zahjouka” gives the most comprehensive account) and while they’re hardly rock and roll, Leary’s sense of time lapse was appropriately and unsurprisingly apt: when the Master Musicians lock into a groove, minutes quickly turn to hours and hours to minutes.

This was certainly the case last night at the Kennedy Center’s Eisenhower Theater, where Bachir Attar and the Master Musicians played to a full house as part of the ongoing Arabesque Festival. The band cycled through about 9 songs in about 90 minutes, but some bled into others and parts of each could’ve fit seamlessly just about anywhere in the set. The band is comprised of four drummers (most playing the tbel) and four or five players on the oboe-like ghaita, with occasional work from Attar on the lotar, similar to a lute. These ghaitas opened the show with a thick, nasally drone and stayed there for several minutes. Eventually one carved out a lead part, floating in and out of the blaring wall of ghaita, and suddenly it was easy to see how Leary and Co. could get from this to “Tomorrow Never Knows” in just a few short moves.