I affectionately think of him as "the mad,
bad Moroccan," the man-legend described as intense, living fast, and playing
Arabic tablah with the force of a tornado. 
All
you have to do is listen to these classic LP's Feenjon Group: Live at
the Feenjon or Feenjon Group: Jerusalem of Gold and of course
Now Sounds of the Middle East with his musical soul-mate oud master
George Mgrdichian, and you wonder how on earth recording devices managed
to capture that level of intensity! His recorded performances are
like having lightening in a bottle.
As a musician, Ali Hafid was the ultimate BAD-ASS, like if Bruce Lee was a drummer from Morocco!
Although I’ve unfortunately never met him or seen him perform, I’ve felt the breeze of his legend from those who’ve been close to him and witnessed his genius as they shared stories for my awakened ears to hear.
In my mind he seemed mysterious, like a Robert Johnson, with a bluesman’s mystique and creative energy like he was living on rocket-fuel. I grew up listening to the Feenjon records and Ali Hafid was pure excitement and was a brilliant player. My two favorite songs on the Live album are “Aina Zorga” and “Mach, Mach” and on these songs he’s also the vocalist.
Sadly, he’d passed on a number of years ago, but thankfully recordings have preserved this brilliant drummer. Thankfully, I still get e-mails from dancers and musicians who knew him back in the day, and they tell me a story or two. One kind person even sent me this photo of him. This picture is the first time I’d ever seen what he looked like. Unfortunately he’s playing the oud here instead of the tablah. But hey, no complaints, I can see his face finally!
On YouTube, I’ve seen a clip from a documentary of the Feenjon group performing in a pub (in Ireland, strangely enough). There he was preserved forever, brilliant and doing a drum solo that would take your head off. I don’t know where that person could have found that clip, but wow, I was so happy to see Ali Hafid in the only way I could. What a moment, he burned like a comet!
I know drummers who’ve seen him perform in New York back in the late sixties-early seventies, and I ask excitedly “WOW!! What was he like?” and they’d say “He was unreal… absolutely unreal."