Fez’s Moroccan music festival celebrates diversity through music

2006-06-07

The Moroccan music festival in Fez aims to promote democracy, development and peace through art. Performers and music lovers from all over the world meet in Fez for a ten-day festival to promote cultural understanding. A theme for this year’s festival is "A soul for globalization", referring to technology that has made the world smaller, giving people access to cultures that once seemed distant.

[fesfestival.com]

The ancient Arab city of Fez is currently celebrating the 12th annual Moroccan music festival, dubbed the Festival of World Sacred Music, which runs from 3-12 June.

The festival has drawn musicians from over 15 countries throughout the world, including Japan, Tibet, India, Iran, Azerbaijan, Syria, Mali, Latin America and many countries in the Mediterranean under the theme "harmonies".

The performances include whirling dervishes, Ghazal chants, Renaissance and Baroque spiritual music, Sephardic music and American gospel.

Fez is seen by many as an appropriate place for a music festival celebrating diversity. The city has a history of tolerance and diversity, where Jews, Christians and Muslims have lived side by side in harmony since its founding in 789.

Today, Fez is one of the world’s oldest functioning cities and is a UNESCO world heritage site.

But the city once known for religious co-existence has been more ethnically homogenous in recent decades.

"When I was young, there were Jews, Christians and Muslims in Fez. It isn’t like that now," Faouzi Skali, founder of the music festival told the BBC.

Skali started the annual event in 1994, three years after the American-led liberation of Kuwait. He anticipated political tensions in the Arab World, and decided to bring together different cultures to learn from one another.

Now, the festival is bigger than ever. And with several crises raging in countries in the region, including Iraq, Israel, the Palestinian Territories and Sudan, the event appears to be more relevant than ever.

In addition to the international music performances, the festival also hosts a colloquium, or discussion forum called Fez Encounters, which began in 2000. Since then, it has become one of the main intrigues of the festival.

The colloquium, held by academics, religious leaders and political activists, discusses how spirituality and democracy can play a role in peace. This year’s forum aims to discuss poverty, spirituality, economics and globalization.

According to AFP, some 60 delegates from Morocco, France, Tunisia, the United States and Germany, plus Israelis and Palestinians, were expected to take part in the forum discussions.

In 2001, the United Nations recognised the festival as a major contributor to dialogue between civilizations.

The forum has caught the attention Western countries, with the French cultural minister, Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres, attending a meeting on Saturday in Fez’s 19th century Batha palace.

"The political powers of today’s world must take on their full role and not yield to certain currents like fundamentalism, which together we must know to fight against," AFP quoted the French minister as saying. "In globalization, respect for identities, cultures and religions is an essential factor in peace," de Vabres added.