Richard Bangs' Adventures with Purpose: Morocco, Quest for the Kasbah Blu-ray offers solid video and decent audio in this excellent Blu-ray release
Experience the sultry landscape and spicy culture of Morocco in high definition. Africans, Arabs, Jews, Europeans, sultans, scholars, pirates and holy men came from the south, from the east and the north to this land in the northwest corner of Africa. Along the way, they sought refuge in Kasbahs. Go behind the towering walls of these ancient fortress cities, from Marrakesh to coastal Essaouria to Casablanca. Travel by camel and spend the night in a nomad tent in the Sahara Desert. Discover Fès, Tangier, Rabat and traverse the Atlas Mountains with explorer Richard Bangs as he seeks to find the modern meaning of the Kasbah in Morocco.
I'm not quite sure what the statute of limitations might be in a case like this, but I'm about to reveal a not so deep and dark family secret of mine. My father, who ended his military career as a Major General, was a battalion commander in World War II in the infantry division which liberated large swaths of Northern Africa, notably Morocco. As the commander, he had first choice over the "spoils of war," and shall we say he "liberated" some pretty cool artifacts from several Moroccan cities, chief among them Port Lyautey (my dad's exploits were actually chronicled in some well known stories by famed war correspondent A.J. Liebling which appeared in both The New Yorker and subsequent compilations of Liebling's writings, hence I'm not too concerned with my revelations here). I therefore grew up surrounded by some fairly exotic Moroccan items, including an incredible handcrafted chair made of mother of pearl pieced together like an ornate arabesque you might see in a mosque. One of my strongest memories growing up, as mistaken as it turned out to be, was of a huge oil painting which hung in our home of the gigantic arched Gate of Fes, which due to this particular portrayal, I mistook for much of my childhood for a cloaked, hunched over woman. This is all to say that Morocco has always held a unique fascination for me, a fascination that was literally brought home for me at any early age by the unusual African paraphernalia inhabiting various nooks and crannies of my childhood family home. Richard Bangs seems to share my fascination with the ancient, actually surprisingly multi-cultural North African locale, and he brings his typical effervescence to a nice overview of the land and its culture.
"Come with me to the Kasbah..."
Unlike a lot of Bangs' Adventures with Purpose outings, there's no explicit environmental task he's setting out to explore. Therefore, we're not focused on Egypt's crocodiles or India's horned rhino, for example. Instead we get a great introduction to the feel of Morocco, as Bangs visits several cities, from Fes (where you'll get to see that mammoth gate memorialized in the painting I mention above) to the gorgeous coastal city of Tangier to, of course, Casablanca. Some of the adventures Bangs details are fun, like the new fad of sand dune skiing, while others are redolent of millennia past, as in dagger forging. The journey to Casablanca is about the only hokey moment in this particular episode, with an expected visit to the patently fake and modern "Rick's Café" that pays homage to the classic 1940's Warner Brothers film. (As a sometimes lounge pianist myself, I had to wonder how often the poor hapless keyboard guy there has to play "As Time Goes By" every night).
If there's nothing especially revelatory in this Bangs outing, this is one of the more wonderfully colorful and musical episodes of Bangs' television series. Moroccan resident and musician Randy Weston introduces us to the polyrhythms of Moroccan street musicians, in a drum display that has elements of the Afro-Brasilian element which melded traditional African beats to the slave rhythms of Portugal and Brasil. Some of the markets are unbelievably colorful, and some pop up in rather surprising places, as when Bangs is hiking through a rust red valley that could almost be the southwestern United States, and there between two cliffs is a display of fabric and other wares for sale.
Bangs does manage to impart some interesting history along the way, giving an overview of the Kasbah as a sociological phenomenon, but also dwelling for a moment or two on the Roman influence which is still manifest in some impressive looking ruins which dot the African landscape. Morocco comes off in this enterprise as a uniquely multi-cultural affair, despite its obvious Muslim heritage, something that may make it more eclectically appealing to potential travelers.
There are both pluses and minuses to the video presentation of this Adventure with Purpose, which arrives with an MPEG-2 codec. For about 95% of the time, this is a wonderfully sharp and incredibly colorful Blu-ray, with brilliant saturation and some excellent detail. You can count the hairs on a camel's face, or see the unbelievably complex patterns in various arabesques, for example. Unfortunately, for the other 5% of the time, you're greeted by some abysmally bad ringing and shimmer on familiar items like trees, but also, perhaps a bit more unusually, on sand dunes and the like. In fact at one point Bangs talks about the "shimmer of the desert" and I almost thought he was describing the artifacting of this Blu-ray. If you can overlook these admittedly relatively quickly passing moments, there's a lot to enjoy here.
I'm not sure if something like this television features screams out for a 5.1 mix, although with the abundance of ethnic musics offered in this particular episode, some audiophiles may be pining for more than this PCM 2.0 track. That said, there's perfect fidelity and decent enough separation on this track, with everything from Bangs' voiceovers and on screen narration to the really wonderful music delivered with excellent fidelity. There is some fun low end "whomp" here in the many African drum segments.
Again, I'm a bit confused by the lack of real extras on this Blu-ray, as the included promo for the originally released SD-DVD version of this title promotes the bonuses included in that format. There's really nothing to speak of here, just promos for other titles in the series. As with the other Topics releases of this series, this is presented in its original broadcast format, with those semi-annoying PBS "brought to you by" bumpers before and after the main feature.
This is another fine offering in the Adventures with Purpose series. More colorful and musical than many of Bangs' outings, this also lacks the environmental focus that seems to be central to Bangs' mission. That said, there's a wealth of information in this brief hour that should delight armchair travelers.
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