I am devastated to learn of the sudden death of my fellow music journalist Robert Hilferty. I met Robert last year during my stay in Fes, Morocco. (Photo gallery here.) Together with our colleague Derek Beres, we spent a good deal of time traipsing around the medina in the burning heat. The beautiful orange-leather wallet I brought home from that trip remains one of my wife’s favorite possessions. Robert helped me haggle for it. His memory lives on in our home.
I’ll never forget Robert’s fundamental kindness, his quirks, his unbound enthusiasm. He appears briefly, around 1:15, in this video I shot of the Aïssawa Sufi Brotherhood.
At a free afternoon concert by the legendary Moroccan group Nass El Ghiwane, Robert had a dancing freakout unlike anything I’ve ever witnessed. His shirt became drenched in sweat. Moroccans cleared a large space around him and gawked in awe, as this bald-headed American swerved and spun, waved his limbs and surrendered to an uninhibited frenzy with its own sort of logic and grace. He asked me to hold his backpack until he was good and done. I remember one move where he’d reach elegantly toward the sky, as if to capture the moon.
He wanders into the frame a number of times in this video I shot. At that point he was still very early into his antics, backpack still attached. God bless him.
One Comment
What a beautiful post about your friend. RIP.