Jones called the tracks "a specially chosen representation" of music played in the village during the annual week-long Rites of Pan Festival.

The executive producers were Philip Glass, Kurt Munkacsi, and Rory Johnston, with notes by Bachir Attar, Paul Bowles, William S. Burroughs, Stephen Davis, Jones, Brion Gysin, and David Silver.

This deluxe album included additional graphics, more extensive notes by David Silver and Burroughs, and a second CD, produced by Cliff Mark, with two "full-length remixes.

[6] The album's music included songs meant for the village's "most important religious holiday festival, Aid el Kbir".

[15] The cover illustration on the 1971 album was originally a painting by Mohamed Hamri[17][18] depicting the master musicians with Brian Jones in the center.

[26][27] Brion Gysin's original sleeve-notes were altered to remove all reference to the central role that Hamri played in introducing him to the music of the village.

The multi-page booklet also included reminiscences and edited essays about the original band written by Brion Gysin, (who died in 1986 and therefore was not consulted), David Silver, Stephen Davis, William S. Burroughs, Brian Jones, and Bachir Attar.

In 1995, the Master Musicians of Joujouka, and Mohamed Hamri launched an international campaign demanding their interest in their recording with Brian Jones be recognised and that the re-release be withdrawn from sale until their concerns were addressed.

[40] Richie Unterberger of AllMusic described it as a "document of Moroccan traditional music that achieves trance-like effects through its hypnotic, insistent percussion, eerie vocal chanting, and pipes."

"[41] They added of its prescient musical style: "Drums throb in the foreground as the pipers are sucked figuratively into the slipstream of a jet engine via extreme phase shifting.

"[41]According to author Louise Grey, the album was influential enough that other figures besides Jones, such as Ornette Coleman, Bill Laswell and Richard Horowitz, were also drawn into working with the Joujouka musicians.

"[43] In 1999, Rob Chapman of Mojo wrote that Jones entered the project "with all the anthropological fervour of a Samuel Charters or Alan Lomax", but in his doctoring of the tapes, the resulting album is a "proto-dub masterpiece", as belatedly recognised by the Rolling Stones when they collaborated with the Master Musicians of Joujouka for Steel Wheels.