APA – Rabat (Morocco) – The Fès Festival of Sacred Music is back for its 27th edition, scheduled to run from 15 to 23 September.
This year, the opening night of the festival, to be held on Friday 15 September at 9pm at Bab Al Makina, will be a journey to the sources of inspiration of music from Andalusia.
A poet, singer and musician of Kurdish origin, Abu Al-Hassan Ali Ibn Nafi, known as Zyriab, will take the audience on a journey back to the Umayyad court of Amir Abd al-Rahman II of Cordoba in a show featuring artists from Uzbekistan, Iran, Syria, India, Spain, Egypt, Italy, Armenia, France and Morocco.
The festival will welcome a number of artists to Bab Al Makina, Dar Tazi and the Jnane Sbile garden.
These include Sami Yusuf (Saturday 16 September), a composer and musician inspired by universalism, Madalena (Saturday 16 September), with a choir of 23 women from the Pays d’Oc under the direction of Manu Theron, a singer and creator who has set to music the Cantilene de Santa Maria Magdalena de Marseille, the score of which was lost over two centuries ago.
Audiences will also discover Andalucia Gitana (Sunday 17 September), a meeting of the legends of gypsy flamenco with the great traditions of Andalusian and Amazigh Morocco, and the Trio des Trois lignes (Tuesday 19 September), who have devised an original repertoire at the crossroads of learned and popular music.
Four Sufi nights are scheduled in the Jnan Sbil garden. “Live Cinema” is also on the menu with Vincent Moon (Sunday 17 September), with a performance combining live-edited cinema and the search for a new hybrid format for relating to the spectator.
This year’s Festival Forum, on the theme of “The quest for the Al-Andain spirit,” will take place on Saturday 16 September at the Palais Al Madina. “This theme has been chosen for Forum 2023 because of its far-reaching impact and the leaps it has made possible in all fields of knowledge over several centuries,” says a festival press release. Two themes will be addressed.
The first will deal with universality in the spirit of Al-Andalus and the second with humanism in the spirit of Al-Andalus.
HA/fss/abj/APA