The Fès Festival of World Sacred Music was founded in 1994 by Faouzi Skali, a Moroccan anthropologist and specialist of Sufism. The idea: to open a space of dialogue between the religious traditions of the world, in a Morocco where Sufism is alive and where the medina of Fès — UNESCO-listed in 1981 — offers an acoustic and spiritual setting without equal.

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The festival is held each year in June, over nine days. More than 60,000 cumulative spectators, a programme at once scholarly and popular.

I. The venues

Three main venues structure the programme: the gardens of the Batha palace (intimate open-air concerts), Bab Makina (a great monumental stage at the foot of the royal palace), the Bou Inania medersa (intimate spiritual concerts in the Marinid jewel-case). Plus free concerts on Boujloud square.

II. Programme

Sufi recitations (samaâ, dhikr), Gregorian chants, Corsican and Georgian polyphonies, Indian qawwâlî (heirs of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan), Sephardic and Jewish liturgical music, Tibetan chants, African-American gospel, Hindu mantras.

III. The spirit

The festival does not claim to be ecumenical: each tradition is presented in its integrity. The aim is mutual listening — the experience that very different musics can coexist in the same space for nine days without diluting one another.

∗ Sources

1. Fès Festival — fesfestival.com
2. Esprit de Fès Foundation — Foundation