After two years of Covid-19, Morocco is relaunching the major music festivals that have made the kingdom’s reputation on the international cultural scene.
This new musical season begins on June 3, 2022 in Essaouira with the 24th Gnaoua festival, a must on the world music calendar.
Spiritual music initially worn by West African slaves in Morocco, Gnaoua music was included on the Unesco list of intangible heritage in 2019. Over time, the Essaouira festival has managed to decompartmentalize hypnotic Gnaoua music by creating bridges with jazz or blues, thus attracting a large audience (up to 300,000 spectators in three days).
On the program of this festival, the traditional concerts of mâalems (Gnaoua masters), but also of young artists appropriating this musical tradition. We will find for the opening of the festival the Malian Old Farka Touré (son of Ali Farka touré), who will share the stage with the maâlem Abdeslam Alikane and Aziz Ouzouss, cantor of Berber culture.
The programmers of the festival, canceled for two years due to a pandemic, have taken care of their posters with English folk singer Piers Faccini, Cuban Cimafunk and Israeli jazz star Avishai Cohen.
For the first time, the organizers have opted for a “travelling festival”. Marrakech will take over from Essaouira on June 9 with two great Gnaoua maâlems, Abdelkebir Merchane and Mustapha Baqbou. They will be joined on stage by Haitian saxophonist Jowee Omicil, Senegalese Cheikh Diallo and his kora, Burkinabe percussionist Yaya Ouattara, Senegalese guitarist Hervé Samb and Algerian drummer Karim Ziad.
Another meeting that resonates beyond Moroccan borders, the Sacred Music Festival of Fez will be held from June 9 to 12. Faithful to its cultural and spiritual tradition, the theme of the 2022 edition is Architecture and the Sacred. The opening evening offers a trip from Fez to Jerusalem via Tibet, the Taj Mahal in India, Notre-Dame de Paris cathedral to finish with the Hassan II mosque in Casablanca.
This edition welcomes musicians from the Sultanate of Oman, Kazakhstan and Sufi music from northern India, in particular. The sacred chants will be embodied through the voices of the Roohani Sisters (Indian classical music), the Kazakh Saniye Ismail, performer of traditional Uyghur music, and Sardinian polyphonies.
Hailed by the UN in 2001 as a major event that has contributed to the dialogue between civilizations, the Fez festival has hosted Björk, Patti Smith and Barbara Hendricks in the past.
Casablanca, finally, will host from July 1 to 3, 2022, the Jazzablanca festival with a program open to the sounds of the world but embodied by sure values such as Gilberto Gil, the father of ethio-jazz Mulatu Astatke, Ben Harper, Ibrahim Maalouf, Asaf Avidan, figure of Israeli folk-rock, among others.
These three festivals, now well established with their thousands of aficionados, contribute to the international influence of Morocco, which hopes to revive its tourist sector, which has suffered in recent years.