With The Hand of Fatima, Augustadocuments herself as she retraces her father’s journey to the remote Moroccan village of Jajouka. For Robert Palmer it was anodyssey of enlightenment as well as a chance to jam with the village’s famedmaster musicians, a guild that has preserved an age-old music rooted in theprimeval cult of Pan, the goat-footed god of wild things. A child of theAmerican South, he was a stranger utterly at home in the rugged beauty of theMoroccan hill country. Augustahoped to learn about her father, who died in 1997, by making the journeyherself.
Although Augusta puts herself atthe center of the story, even treating viewers to a diaper change for her owndaughter, her presence doesn’t entirely get in the way of what’s actuallyinteresting. Robert Palmer explored blues and jazz, R&B and rock and thesounds of faraway cultures as an author, RollingStone critic and musician. According to at least two of his four wivesinterviewed for the film, he was also addicted to cocaine and utterly incapableof managing daily life. When Augusta’smother describes his “all-consuming passion” for his work, she isn’t offering acompliment.
While many artistsof his generation trekked to Indiain search of an alternative to the spiritual death of Western civilization,Palmer found his golden temple among the mud huts of Jajouka and its orchestraof piping double reeds and trance-inducing drums. Adopted not only into theguild but also the family of the elder maestro, the writer described himself asentering the place beyond words, suffused with radiance. Snippets of homemovies show the ecstatic Palmer playing along with the master musicians on hisclarinet. Suffice it to say that while Augustagained some understanding of her father, she was unable to cross his thresholdinto the unknown.
7 p.m., April 15, UWMUnion Theatre. Free admission.