Looking For The Balearic Beat / Dreaming Of Deia

While researching, looking for the hippie roots of Ibiza’s “Balearic Beat” for a magical minute I got distracted by music being made on Mallorca, and, in particular, in the village of Deia … In the `60s Ibiza’s live music really only consisted of spontaneous jams. Beach drum circles beating, naked folks dancing, as night fell. Crazy parties / happenings in fincas full of freaks. Nothing was recorded. All was of, and lost to, the moment. However, on the neighbouring Mallorca there was in parallel, a more serious scene. Congregated in the small village of Deia was a close knit community of artists, musicians and writers. At the centre of which was the former war poet, turned mystic / magus, Robert Graves. Born in England, in 1895, Graves first moved to Mallorca, in 1929. Settling in the isolated Deia after experiencing the horrors of the trenches of the 1914 -1918 World War. Near fatally wounded in The Battle Of The Somme, Graves was close friends with fellow poets, Wilfred Owen and…