Last night I was out with a friend and she had asked me, “whatever happened to Loop Guru?”

I went back in time to when I first heard the brilliant “Under Influence” when it was still a dance single.

Over twelve years ago, I was in the midst of Marin County’s tie-dyed dervish and twirling tantrika set at the Civic Center, listening to audio exotica spun by Cheb-I-Sabbah. Cheb had just been bringing records by Trans-Global Underground and Loop Guru back from Europe. Hearing Loop Guru for the first time was kind of like hearing the Sex Pistols, only while The Pistols gave voice to my feelings of alienation and angst, Loop Guru channeled my passion for fusion of culture, sound and spirit — a polyglot of possibility come to life.

I remember walking up to Cheb and committing the most obvious sin that anyone can inflict on a DJ and that’s to ask him who a certain artist was and where they got the record. DJ’s are territorial by nature as records are their ephemeral investment in intellectual property, but Cheb was even more acerbic and guarded than most. After he reluctantly told me they were “Loop Guru” and that he had got the records in Paris, I then pushed my luck and asked him how he had discovered them? In his slightly nasal, French-Algerian flavored English, he spit out, “I’m a fucking DJ Man.”

Twelve years later, Sabbah has graduated from community dances to being the lead mixer for Six Degrees. His fusions of traditional Hindu, Arabic and North African music with ambient dub beats have made him one of the more popular producers of the genre. As far as Loop Guru goes, a couple of years later I wound up backstage with them after a show in San Francisco where I found that they had more in common with The Sex Pistols than I had ever thought. They guzzled quartz of tequilla and beer like they were water. While they certainly didn’t assault my spiritual sensibilities, I was definitely reminded that spirit moves in mysterious and even messy ways.

by Robert Phoenix
Robert Phoenix moves freely among a vast array of realities, but tends to focus-in on music and human evolution.