Solar Impulse Continues Flight to Morocco

The Solar Impulse aircraft of Bertrand Piccard and André Borschberg took off from Madrid early today for its final destination of Rabat-Salé in Morocco. The prototype is expected to land before midnight in Rabat.

The solar powered aircraft, which will soon be attempting a round-the-world flight has been using the flight as a test programme while at the same time participating in celebrations around the construction activities in the Ouarzazate region of what will be the world’s largest thermo-solar power plant. Of a capacity of 160 MW, the plant is part of Morocco’s energy plan whose goal is to build, by 2020, five solar parks with the capacity of 2000 megawatts, reducing CO2 emission of 3,7 million tons.

The Solar Impulse team said it supports this pioneering project which is in line with its own message and its philosophy of renewable energies.

The first leg of the trip from Switzerland to Spain (see our story here), was completed by pilot André Borschberg, now Bertrand Piccard takes over the controls to complete the mission to complete of flying for over 2,500km without a drop of fuel. The aircraft will take-off from the Madrid-Barajas airport and climb to an altitude of 11,000ft (3,600 metres) toward Seville. The HB-SIA will then cross the Gibraltar strait over the Mediterranean at an altitude of 26,000ft (8,500m) at around 16:00UTC entering Moroccan airspace via Tangier for Rabat. The landing in Rabat is expected at 10 pm.

Official events for youth and adult audiences, seminars and conferences organized by MASEN will take place throughout the week in Rabat. Although the flight has been confirmed, the flight director may still decide to postpone it or alter the route up to a short time before takeoff.

You can follow the aircraft in real time on www.solarimpulse.com.

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Landing took place at 11.30 pm Rabat time.

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Duo Ykeda - Piano Concert in Fez

On Tuesday, June 5, at 19h, at Hotel Palais Jamai -  another great initiative from the French Institute of Fez; the opportunity to experience the extraordinary music of Duo Ykeda. 

DUO YKEDA has made ​​a specialty of music for piano four hands (piano duet) now devoting their talents to this musical form

Born in 1971 in Japan, Tamayo Ikeda began her musical studies at the age of three years.  She started at Toho Gakuen in Tokyo before being admitted to the Conservatoire National Superieur de Musique in Paris in 1989. She studied under the direction of Jacques Rouvier for piano and Régis Pasquier for chamber music and won two first prizes in these specialties before joining the Postgraduate course in the class of Pascal Devoyon.

French pianist born in Bordeaux in 1970, Patrick Zygmanowski gave his first recital at eleven. He won First Prize in piano and chamber music at the National Conservatory of Music and Dance in Paris, he also studied with Jacques Rouvier.  Passionate about chamber music, he won three first prizes at the Concours International de Musique in Paris (1994), FNAPEC (1995) - with clarinettist Florent Héau - Sauguet and Henri (1995).

The coming together of these two talents was a clash of two civilizations. Tamayo Ikeda of Japan had just arrived in France with only a Japanese traditional education, when she met at the Conservatoire de Paris a young boy from a good Bordeaux family, Patrick Zygmanowski. Tamayo was struggling to decipher the social behaviour of the new country and did not speak French while Patrick was handling all these subtleties that help to move in society.

Music was their first language so common, that which Patrick, by his own admission, did not hesitate to use and abuse to cross language and cultural barriers that separated him from Tamayo. This first victory was easier to win than the next. They had indeed a lot of finesse and intercontinental meetings to convince their families of the viability of their union. A legitimate concern of the parents concerned by this great leap into the unknown, they opposed the quiet certainty that they already offered their first attempts at making music together. They were certainly not the same world but, at the piano, they shared the same universe.

Today, almost twenty years later, Patrick and Tamayo are certainly different from each other in the early days of their meeting. Patrick has adopted daily Japanese several rituals. Tamayo now speaks French and  mixes traditional sushi with the gourmet specialties of Bordeaux, but in reality, each has retained its own identity and especially at the piano. Tamayo is the unspeakable, the waking dream, intuition, her instinct always so right that make her an amazing musician that is also mysterious.

More intellectual, Patrick needs to reverse the scores, analyze, explain. He is not content to be a brilliant pianist. He composes, arranges, solves the most complex problems of reductions for four hands or two pianos of large orchestral works he then shares with Tamayo.

For more information, contact the French Institute in Fez

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Big Bridge Features Fifteen Moroccan Poets

Finding translations of Moroccan poets is usually a real struggle. However now we can report that fifteen Moroccan poets are featured in Big Bridge’s starter-anthology, edited by poet-translator El Habib Louai. Their influences are at least as wide as Darwish, al-Chebbi, T.S. Eliot, and Baudelaire.

Big Bridge and its editor, Michael Rothenberg and co-editor, Terri Carrion (pictured above) are to be congratulated. Big Bridge is an amazing resource and certainly worth spending time exploring. You will find Big Bridge here.

The poems are translated by the anthology’s editor, El Habib Louai.

Links to all the poets’ work:

Boujema El Aoufi	Idriss Allouch
Mubarak Ouassat	Najat Zbair
Saad Sarhan	Ikram Abdi
Amal Al Akhdar	Mustafa Radki
Jamal Bdouma	Abdellatif Al Badadi, translated by El Habib Louai
El Habib Louai	Abdellatif Al Ouarari
Mahdi Qeraz	Mohamed Mahou
Bouchra Yassine

And as a little taste of the fine work....


Casablanca - Ikram Abdi

Nothing but the bodies of floating ice
Bubbles of cold greetings
Swaying over a sea of noise and boredom
But you go
Groping her tired face
With obliterated features

Caressing tufts of its canned sun
Crossing its bleeding streets
With frosty steps
With Bereaved Features
With necktie like gallows
In deserted premises

Dig in your forehead distant grooves
Awakening the lust of hugs in your interiority
But there you go....

Think of your walking death on the sidewalk
Ask about the color of your shrouds
The form of your funeral
Who will walk in it
Who will say the prayers
All the hands beseeching the roof of the bus
But there you go
You wish to utter this weakened scream
Sitting in your ethereal cafe Casablanca
The sad clouds of your coffee
Thicken in the sky of a newspaper
Suspended in your shivering hands
It is raining blood
Havoc
Shells

El Habib Louai  is a fine translator.  He completed his primary and secondary school studies in his hometown Taroudant. He obtained a Baccalaureate with a focus on Lettres Modernes from Ibn Souleiman Roudani in 2004. He also earned a Bachelor in English Studies with a concentration in literature from Ibn Zohr University in Agadri, Morocco.

He is at the moment completing a master's degree in comparative studies at Ibn Zohr University in Agadir, Morocco. He is involved in various projects having to do with poetry translation. His poems were published in various international literary magazine, journals and reviews such as Danse Macabre du Jour, Palestine Chronicle, Troubadour 21, Sagarana, Istanbul Literary Review, Indigo Rising Magazine, Pirene's Fountain, the Tower Journal and Contemporary Critical Horizons.

His translation of a collection of poems by the exiled Iranian poet Ali Abdelrezaei is available in poetrymag.ws. His poem "A Night in Tunisia" was translated into Italian and Romanian. His paper "Retracing the Concept of the Subaltern from Gramsci to Spivak: Historical Development and New Application" was published in the African Journal of History and Culture last January 2012.

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Hidden Waters (‘Les eaux cachées’) - Filming Completed in Fez

This week saw the completion of filming for Joe Lukawski's fascinating documentary on water in Fez. The 52 minute film, Hidden Waters (‘Les eaux cachées’) is an examination of the ancient water system in Fez, water’s commodification, and some illuminating urban planning initiatives aimed at cleaning up the rivers of the city. Here is the trailer for the film.

Joe celebrates the completion of months of hard work

For updates, photos and production stories from “Hidden Waters,” check out the blog at http://fezfilm.wordpress.com
You can also visit Joe Lukawski's blog at http://joelukawski.wordpress.com.


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Place R'Cif - A Public Space Comes Alive

After the creation of a new public space it is always interesting to observe how local people use it. In the case of the new public area at R'cif in the Fez Medina, the large open space is turning into a popular night-time meeting place. During the day the trees are still too small to provide reasonable shade, but the evenings see the square crowded with families and people of all ages playing football, chatting or simply sitting on the amphitheatre-style seating, people watching.

Place R'cif - a great place to hang out

Girls v boys football

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Unique Journalism Opportunity for Young Moroccan Women

In partnership with the U.S. Embassy and the Institute for Cinema and Audiovisual Specialists (ISCA) in Rabat, U.S. NGO Global Girl media (GGM) is looking for candidates to take part in a unique new media journalism training program.

This is a chance to participate in a specialized training session on MOJO (Mobile Journalism and Blogging), along with a dozen other young women aged 18-22 delivered by GGM at ISCA, Rabat end of August – mid September. Finalists will be trained and mentored to be active citizen journalists in Morocco. Act fast on this unique opportunity! Nomination deadline is June 4th, 2012 - Click here for form and selection criteria.

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