Essaouira is a picturesque fishing town of 70,000 inhabitants on the Atlantic coast which each June on a Thursday-Sunday weekend swells and pulsates with over 450,000 festival revelers. Essaouira has long been a fabled counter-culture destination; port of call for assorted Rolling Stones, Jimmy Page, William S. Burroughs, Maria Callas, it\'s where Jimi Hendrix reputedly wrote \"Castles Made of Sand,\" and where Orson Welles filmed his cinematic \"Othello.\" The Gnaoua are deeply rooted in Essaouira, one of their centers.