I'm still on my way to Africa but am convinced I'll get there one of these good days. It only took me 30 years to get to Cuba, so I'm well within my limits.
True, I visited Maroc on several occasions, and got as far south as the beginning of the foot-burning Sahara. I loved it–especially in the High Atlas mountains, where I spent three extraordinary days jamming with Berber tribesmen who thankfully spoke no words of French, let alone English. We communicated almost entirely through music, with a few hand signals thrown in. They played drums and a single-string instrument, I believe was called a zaz. Me–I foxed them with a Jew's harp, small enough to conceal in the palm of my hand.
Years later, when I began my immersion in Cuban music I was grateful for those Moroccan trips, as I began to hear rhythms and phrasing I recognised, which had travelled across the Mediterranean straits during the Moorish invasion and subsequent occupation of Spain. About the same time the Moors were finally expelled from Spain, after totally transculturating the Iberian peninsula (from architecture, to music and food) the Spanish were introducing these absorbed Moorish rhythms into their evolving Creole music in Cuba.
http://www2.guardian.co.tt/letters/2013-08-04/cabal-liability