At the Gnaoua and World Music Festival in Essaouira, music lovers were treated to a magical sequence of four big names, who, through their multiple influences and universal perception of the arts, abolished the borders between music and between cultures. On the Moulay El Hassan stage, it was Karim Ziad, the drummer with multiple inspirations, who set the tone with pieces where jazz easily rubbed shoulders with popular Arab sounds, before spicing up the evening with the entry on stage of a Gnaoua troupe and the sublime Oum, who imprinted a joyful Arab-African melody on this performance. The sequence was almost perfect, once the baton was taken up by Richard Bona, a virtuoso Cameroonian bassist, singer and songwriter and one of the must-sees of current Jazz and African music. You didn't have to be an expert to perceive the strong presence of the singer's roots, and suddenly an African tone dominated the stage and the audience was bewitched as much by the voice as by the instrument. He was also enchanted by Bona's humour and interactivity, which left no one indifferent. But in the art of deduction, it was Maceo Parker and his group who excelled, through a relaxed interpretation, their way of moving on stage and their improvised stagings, gestures and mimes in support, all against a backdrop of Afro-American rhythms to unleash all those who listened to them. And this human mosaic that was in front of the stage found no difficulty in understanding, reacting and even acting. It's done, the borders have disappeared. And when Parker lets go, it's his whole career started early that emerges from the tip of his saxophone, a career that began at age 8 already, and which led the North Carolina native to accompany iconic funk figures like James Brown, Bootsy Collins, Georges Clinton and Fred Wesley. Moreover, he did not fail to pay tribute to those who guided him at the beginning of his career, before forging a style of his own. From the percussion of Ziad's drums, to the resonance of Bona's bass guitar and the sweet sound of Parker's saxophone, the audience was not at the end of its joy and it was the entry on stage of Maâlem Hamid El Kasri and his group that gave meaning to all this mixture. Through the Gnaoui art that he has practised since the age of 7, El Kasri gave a synthesis of a whole evening and one realises, at that moment, that there are cultural roots that unite all the figures of this attractive line-up, namely the Arab-African culture which is at the heart of the Gnaoui heritage. Elsewhere in Essaouira, on the beach stage, the floor was given to youth, through the group Mazagan, which gave another dimension to Moroccan Chaâbi music, by easily embedding it with Western sounds, enough to reconcile the young audience with its heritage. And when the Nigerian singer Nneka enters the stage, it is impossible to resist her warm timbre, against a backdrop of a Neo soul/Hip hop style of her own. At Bordj Bab Marrakech, the time was for fusions, with two of the most creative blends, between Maâlem Mohamed Kouyou, for whom even improvised fusions have no more secrets, and Annadi Al Bahri, the Emirati group that no longer needs to be introduced, and Maâlem Aziz Baqbou, a Gnaoui from father to son, and the famous Malhoun singer Majda El Yahyaoui.