The 2022 Jazzfest Berlin performance by revered, iconoclastic reedist Peter Brötzmann, Moroccan Gnaoua adept Majid Bekkas playing the two-stringed, camelskin-backed guembri, and Chicago-bred drummer Hamid Drake, documented as Catching Ghosts, is historic.It’s a return to performance by 81-year-old Brötzmann after pandemic years affected his health, and recalls his prior Gnaouan encounters, like The Catch of a Ghost (2019) with guembri master Maâlem Moukhtar Gania, and a 1996 meet with Maâlem Mahmoud Gania at Austria’s Music Unlimited Festival (Hamid there both times). It also is a triumph of musical universalism, made in the moment without even one rehearsal, proving that “free” spontaneous interactions can transcend cultural lines, still deriving power from age-old traditions.Improvising on incantations from Gnaoua liturgy, Brötzmann,...