Date: Mon, 06 Sep 2004
Subject: ZEGG: The Sufi Rock Band

One more thing I should mention about summercamp this year is the rock band who came to play on the Saturday at the end of the first week. They were from Idaho, I think, all standard American guys such as you might find in any rock band. But they were all Sufis. The guy who played back-up lead guitar was the guru. He was talking to a crowd the next night at the Kneipe (tavern), and jokingly complained that here he was, a rock and roll star, and no women had offered him any sex. To which Delores (one of the ZEGG leaders) said that she'd be happy to spend some time in bed with him. To which the guru said, "That's one of the things I like about Zegg. You guys have a sense of humor." To which Delores answered that she hadn't been joking, which provoked even more laughter. The guru eventually said that he'd have to take a rain check, and then people had to explain to Delores and the other Germans what the American expression "rain check" means. I don't think anyone knew that it was originally a baseball term, referring to a voucher someone is given when he has bought a ticket for a game that isn't played because of rain.

The Sufi guru talked for a long time at the Kneipe and was very entertaining. He himself acknowledged that what he was doing that night was entertainment and not teaching, but it still gave a good impression of the sort of teaching he does. The Sufis stayed up to close to midnight, and then invited those of us who wanted to to join them at dawn (5 AM) for morning meditation. I guess some of the ZEGG people did. But since I was staying in the Zegg hotel, where the Sufis had been given accomodation, I was able to discover that following their three-hour 5 AM meditation, they went to bed again. A good plan, since they then drove to Hamburg for their next gig.

Basically they were a good bar band. They did a lot of covers of standard rock songs from the Sixties, which they performed quite adequately but not exceptionally well. Mostly not hard rocking stuff, but things like Buffalo Springfield, the Mamas and Papas, Dylan, and the Grateful Dead. And they had quite a few songs of their own, which were not as good as their covers, in the opinion of most of the people I talked to.

Sufi-ism is part of the Muslim tradition. I don't think I'd realized that before. None of the Sufis I had known before had said much about that. These guys didn't emphasize it, but didn't play it down either.

Love & kisses,
--Lee