Musical Marijuana, 1865

Gypsy Musicians perform in the Russian Empire, 1865

Musical Marijuana

From humanities earliest musical notes, the fans who followed the sound have shared in a ancient musical tradition handed down for centuries: smoking cannabis!

Smoking hashish from a waterpipe at a music festival held during Ramadan in Egypt. 1865

Long before the drug fueled festivals of the 60’s could capture the public’s perception of concert consumption, music fans around the world have unknowingly shared in a ancient tradition. The ritual of smoking cannabis has not only changed the way music should be heard but also the way it should be played.

Ancient remnants of this musical ritual can be found in some of the most remote cultures in the world. In South Africa tribes including the Zulu and Basotho incorporated ‘dagga’ or cannabis smoking into their musical traditions. As the tribes men gather to sing traditional folk songs, cannabis begins to blaze spurring the first musical notes to ring out over the thick still smoke. According to one Basotho folk song, they smoke cannabis in these musical meetings to ‘remember’*.

The dancing Nautch girls of northern India have indulged in hash for centuries, smoked from elaborate water pipes while enjoying their own traveling assortment of musicians. As the pleasurable smoke washed over the pulse of the music would prove too much as the girls as they sprung to action rhythmically dancing in their own world for a entranced crowd.

Nearly 100 years ago in Greece a huddled audience would sit in a smoke filled backroom of a ‘tekke’ (hashish coffee house) smoking water pipes full of hashish listening to the melodic rhythm of rebetiko music. Cannabis would be so influential to the early Greek music it would play a large role in creating a subculture of those who followed the bands, the Mangas.

Right here in America Jazz changed the way the American public viewed how music should be fully appreciated. The muggles king Milton ‘Mezz’ Mezzrow simply explained why cannabis had such a large influence on both jazz musicians and the audience who listened, “Tea puts a musician in a real masterly sphere, and that’s why so many jazzmen have used it” adding that for both the musician and audience “you hear everything at once and you hear it right.”

The musicians themselves often prefer playing to a elevated crowd. Louis Armstrong, a legendary toker himself, believed a stoned audience brought a warmth to his performance once fondly recalling “One reason we appreciated pot, as y’all calls it now, was the warmth it always brought forth from the other person, especially the ones that lit up a good stick of that shuzzit or gage”

‘Group of Nautch Girls listening to Musicians’ Kashmir, India 1870’s