Fes Festival of Sufi Culture - an Overview

Aurora Borealis, reporting on the Fes Festival of Sufi Culture for The View from Fez, sums up the events of the last week.

Director Faouzi Skali with Flamenco singer Curro Pinana

Lots of Sufism, Not Enough Culture

To those of us familiar with the broad sweep of The Fes Festival of World Sacred Music, the Sufi Culture Festival seems like a microcosm. If it could fulfill that core focus effectively -- sending its audience back to their everyday lives feeling inspired and elated -- it would be a resounding success. But people I spoke to who have known the festival since it started three years ago say that it is still lacks clarity and professional organisation. At present its ambition outstrips its capacity to deliver both a meaningful message and high quality entertainment.

The formula echoes the mid period of the Sacred Music Festival, between 2001 and 2006, when Faouzi Skali was Director General, before he took off to found the Sufi Culture Festival. It is a dual-track approach -- round table and forum discussion groups under the rubric "Giving Soul to Globalisation" -- and concert performances by both popular and more arcane Sufi musical ensembles.

Topics discussed by panels of distinguished academics, philosophers and activists like Edgar Morin, Katherine Marshall and Mohamed Berrada, included "The end of capitalism?", "Preventing a food crisis" and "Sufism and reform". The discussions are based in the application of spiritual values to material world issues and dilemmas, rather than mere intellectual speculation. In practice there's a measure of both, plus some examples where words have been translated into action -- Pierre Rabhi's Terre et Humanisme for example.

But the all-pervading, over-arching impetus is generated by Faouzi Skali's vision and his extraordinary capacity to articulate it in language which is accessible to most levels of mental agility. Faouzi Skali is The Sufi Culture Festival . He scurries about from one venue to another, from concert to forum to film show -- and yes, he does spread himself far too thin.

In my view Faouzi Skali's discourses were the most interesting aspect of the festival. The breadth and depth of his Sufi knowledge and experience is beyond a scintilla of doubt. For example, he explained the apparent paradox inherent in Sufism as both a grassroots, populist movement within Islam and a refined esoteric tradition that gives access to exalted states of altered consciousness. When Faouzi speaks about the sublime, the non-verbal, the spacious and the divine he does so while solidly rooted in mother earth. He is impressive in this role and one could suggest that he stick to it and delegate festival management to someone else.

And so to the music. Alas, the consensus among experienced festival goers is that as of now, the programme does not work. There were numerous organisational glitches, including bad sound quality, cancellations, venue changes and consistently late starts. There were some fine performances, notably from the Flamenco singer Curro Pinana, a Palestinian ensemble with Moneim Adwan and a deeply moving Samaa from the Tariqa Qadriyya Boutchichiyya. But the lineup relied heavily on Moroccan Sufi brotherhoods and as a result lacked a genuine international flavour. This apparent parochialism may reflect a tight budget, but if the festival is to make its presence felt further afield and with a wider, non-partisan audience, it will have to become more representative of Sufism as a global phenomenon. It will also have to find the means to showcase internationally recognised performers. The one I would crawl over a bed of nails to hear is Shiekh Ahmad Al-Tuni from Egypt. He was originally billed, but failed show up.

One loyal member of the festival audience made the point that the festival needs to be more festive. More fun, more drama, more of a spontaneous atmosphere. Less starchy, tight-lipped listening. Another insisted that Sufism is best understood through poetry so let's give Sufism's most famous poet the last word....

Not Christian, Jew or Muslim.
Not Hindu, Buddhist, Sufi or Zen.
Not any religion or cultural system.
I am not from the east or the west,
not out of the ocean or up from the ground,
not natural or ethereal,not made of elements at all.
I do not exist, am not an entity in this world or the next,
did not descend from Adam and Eve
or any origin story. My place is placeless,
a trace of the traceless, neither body or soul.
I belong to the Beloved,
have seen the two worlds as one
and that one call to and know:
first, last, outer, inner, only that
breath breathing human being.

Jallaluddin Rumi

Tags: Moroccan Morocco Fes, Maghreb news