Moroccan Inspired Music Wins ARIA Award

Back on August 17 2010,  The View from Fez ran a story about the music of the late, great, Australian musician, Billy Thorpe. Now Thorpe's album Tangier, recorded with  L'Orchestre Symphonique Royal du Maroc in Casablanca in 2006 has become a major hit and an award winner in 2011.

 Our Music critic, Ibn Warraq, was as friend and long-time fan of Thorpe and reports now on a posthumous award for the musician's greatest album - Tangier.

Lynne and Billy Thorpe were married for 34 years, so it was fitting that Lynn and her two daughters Lauren and Rusty were able to stand in for Billy when his final album won the ARIA Award for Best Adult Contemporary Album.

The ARIA Awards are the top Australian music awards and collecting the first ever ARIA to be awarded posthumously, Thorpe's wife urged her husband to "keep rocking in heaven".

Tangier was a life's labour for Thorpe and was finished after his death in February 2007 thanks to the co-operation of musicians, including Mick Fleetwood, record labels and friends.

The late Billy Thorpe

The album was recorded with L'Orchestre Symphonique Royal du Maroc in Casablanca in 2006 following several trips by Thorpe. He was often accompanied by wife Lynne, who on Sunday said she never fully understood the allure of Morocco.

"I don't really know what it was but something got under his skin," Lynne told journalists after accepting the award. "In Tangiers he saw himself as a young boy sailing through the Straits of Gibraltar on his way to Australia. "It was all very poetic and magical for him and the first thing he did when we got there was pick up a guitar and start writing."

Australian music promoter Michael Chugg, who was heavily involved in the project to finish Tangier, said his old friend Thorpe completed the main riff to the song Tangier within hours of arriving in Morocco.

See our original story: Tangier inspires - from beyond the grave 

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