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Turkish Ayin-i Djém, performing at Bab Makina
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Whirling in Fez
June 2007
Flanked by the five musicians of the Dastan Ensemble, on
an elevated stage covered with red Moroccan rugs, the Iranian singer Parissa
sat, eyes closed. As the late afternoon sun dazzled her green bejeweled
caftan and the enormous oak tree that served as a leafy backdrop, Parissa
sang love poems in what sounded like equal parts lamentation and controlled
euphoria. In the crowded audience that spilled out over the Batha Museum’s
courtyard here were Queen Rania of Jordan and U2’s Bono and The
Edge, who happened to have been recording there in early June during the
festival. Parissa’s voice cyclically climbed and descended multiple
notes in one breath with such jarring beauty and intensity that many were
moved to tears.
Parissa’s performance was just one of 40-plus that graced the 2007
Fez Festival of World Sacred Music. For 13 years running, the festival
has showcased traditional as well as broadly interpreted sacred music.
This year featured Pakistani Qawwali, Gregorian chants from Lisbon, the
London Community Gospel Choir, Pergolesi’s cantatas sung by Barbara
Hendricks and Turkish whirling dervishes. The poetry of Rumi, the Sufi
mystic, was pervasive in most of the classical performances, as this year
marks the 800th anniversary of his birth.
There was also the afro-pop of Angélique Kidjo, and a handful of
outstanding Moroccan rock, hip-hop, funk, pop, fusion groups with messages
of peace, tolerance and social justice. The ten day festival also hosted
heady morning discussions with topics such as Cultural Identity vs. Globalization,
and Faith and Reason in the Modern World. Every night was capped by a
free 11 p.m. Sufi performance by a different Moroccan brotherhood in the
garden of Dar Tazi, a beautiful old palace.
“We have a target,” said festival founder and president Mohamed
Kabbaj, “to get people to know each other.” Sitting on a cushion
before the South African Johnny Clegg performed, Mr. Kabbaj noted that
ignorance plagues all striations of society. When asked about Morocco
and the threat of Islamic extremism, he answered: “The origin of
extremism is ignorance. Ignorance creates fear.” Mr. Kabbaj is aware
that his festival can’t stop extremism, “but it’s a
way, a means, and today we have to use all means.” So far his festival
has spawned 27 other scared music festivals world-wide.
All Fez festival venues, some free, others ticketed, were situated around
the incredible medieval Medina, a chaotic labyrinth of “streets”
and alleys, so narrow they can only be used by donkeys and throngs of
pedestrians, most wearing traditional Moroccan clothes.
One of the most visually mesmerizing performances of the festival was
by the whirling dervishes, Ayin-i Djém, from Turkey who traditionally
only whirl in private. They preformed at Bab Makina, an enormous, majestic,
walled-in city gate, transformed into the poshest venue of the festival,
with seating under an open sky, a VIP area, and food for sale, attracting
the wealthier La Ville Moderne people of Fez. In marked contrast to the
Medina, women wore stilettos and plunging necklines, and many a Chanel
purse was tossed on the security X-ray machine upon entry. Only a handful
of women wore headscarves.
While the foreign festival-going contingent, primarily from North America
and Europe, many of whom sported beads, graying hair and newly purchased
flowing Moroccan outfits, sat enraptured by the whirling dervishes, some
locals in the audience saw it simply as a social event, waved to friends
and chatted, both in person and on cell phones.
Another outstanding performance at Bab Makina two nights later was the
Tunisian Sonia M’barek, part of a triple bill of female singers
of Arab-Andalous songs. M’barek’s sublime voice mixed seamlessly
with the strings that repeatedly crescendoed and relented and expressed
impassioned yearning for forgiveness, mercy and devotion to the Prophet.
She perfectly demonstrated melisma, the singing of multiple notes in one
breath. Prevalent in most North African sacred music, melisma can be heard
in neighboring Spain’s flamenco.
The city gates of Bab Boujloud held free concerts—repeats of ticketed
headliners, as well as many outstanding Moroccan rock groups. Just as
Rumi flowed through many of the classical performances, Gnawa, a form
of rhythmic Moroccan music brought from sub-Saharan Africa via slaves
thousands of years ago, was incorporated into the repertoire of most of
the rock groups. Among the instruments heard were the hejhouj, or Gnawan
guitar, and qarqabas, handheld Gnawan metal instruments that are clanked
together like large castanets and evolved from broken shackles.
One of the best performances at Bab Boujloud was the Gnawa-infused pop
of Majda Yahyaoui, who sang with such power and benevolence that the kids
in the audience, including girls, tried to climb the metal crowd-control
gates to get closer.
“I love our heritage and I want to sing everything Moroccan,”
said a smiling Yahyaoui as she donned a white and gold robe backstage
after her performance. “I am the first white woman to sing Gnawan
music,” she added proudly. Yahyaoui is known for singing Malhoun,
another traditionally male genre, and was quick to stress that women used
to be forbidden to sing in public (still the law in some Muslim countries).
“So there’s been progress!”
The Sufi Nights series surprisingly had the most maniacally delirious,
memorable and hypnotizing, performance of the festival, the Ouled Kamar
Gnaoua Ensemble. The eight-man ensemble, dressed in brightly colored silken
robes embroidered with seashells, took turns singing and dancing across
the stage, at first acrobatically, and once with bound feet. They called
out to various saints, clapped, sprinkled oils, playing the hejhouj and
tinny qarqabas. A steady, reciprocal delirium grew over the course of
three hours between the ensemble and the audience, making several teenage
girls in the tightly packed garden dramatically flail their hair around,
one of whom had to be calmed down by her mother.
Most foreigners had made discreet exits by this point, although a few
remained, one of them being the Boston-based composer Osvaldo Golijov,
who was “mind-boggled” by what was unfolding. Three men in
steady progression fell into trances, each crawling on stage on his hands
and knees. One man, seemingly in a state of hypnosis danced around, his
eyes little slits, while the other two convulsed and had to eventually
be carried off the stage by security. |