Fez Festival of Sufi Culture - Day Two

Festival patrons captivated by the discussion and the music.

Sadly, the biggest news today was the rain. The morning came with showers and winds of over twenty kilometres an hour. Not exactly suitable weather for outdoor activities. The afternoon looked set to improve and by 4 pm when the next concert was scheduled to take place, the weather was glorious. Unfortunately, a decision had been made to move the concert from the Batha museum to the Prefecture hall.

Finally - great weather!

Coordination of the move was a little haphazard and several patrons complained they had been told that the concert would start half an hour late - this was not to be. The new time was given as 6pm, but organisational snags meant it was well after that before the doors eventually opened.

There was also a slight problem with scheduling and many patrons arrived expecting the advertised concert of Abir Nasraoui & Curro Piñana (Tunisia/Spain), but since the original programme was publicised this had changed on the new programme to Musiques Sacrees du Maroc by Moultaqa Salam Ali Alaoui (Maroc/France). For those who don't have a copy of the new programme, the Nasraoui and Khaled Ben Yahia and Curro Pinana concert will be on at 4pm on Saturday 25th.

So much talent - even in the audience!

South African artist and author, Anne Graaff, chats
with the UK's PR maven, Mary Finnigan

However, the delay was a pleasant chance to catch up with people and the large crowd was in good spirits. The View from Fez was people-watching and managed to spot several celebrity photographers, a renowned international pianist and a British publicity maven.

Regular readers will remember that The View From Fez was supporting the sponsored trek to the summit of Jebel Toubkal by Lynn Evans Davidson (pictured above) to raise funds for the Fez Dhar el Mehraz (click for story) - well, Lynn, a superb photographer, is back in Fez covering the Sufi Festival.

Other celebrity snappers we snapped were Tom Fakler (pictured above) who is known for his fine photographs of Moroccan artisans and Gérard Chemit (pictured below) whose exhibitions are part of the festival.


Also in the audience today was Christopher Culpo, the internationally acclaimed American pianist.

The Review

Aurora Borealis, covering the Sufi Festival for The View from Fez, has this to say about this afternoon's concert:

Photo: Gérard Chemit

When it finally started at 7pm, the natives were restless - even more so when we stampeded into the prefecture hall to be confronted with VIPs occupying the first few rows. Seating is not raked, so getting a good view of the musicians was difficult.

The group from Toulouse in France was made up of four women and six men, and the leader is the music teacher at the local conservatoire. The woman singer has the voice of an angel - truly remarkable.

The first two numbers were nothing special, but then they cranked up the action with some Maghreb/European fusion and creative instrumentation ... a tin drum that sounded like a gamelan, violin solos and this extraordinary voice soaring over the top, alternating between Arabic intonation and pure operatic soprano. There were beautiful melodies that morphed into hard-line sufi rhythmics. The finale had everyone on their feet, waving and hollering.

Worth the wait? Only just.


Tags: Moroccan Morocco Fes, Maghreb news