In its spirit of openness to the different cultures and languages of the world, the Fes Festival of World Sacred Music invited the large public present on 10 June at the Batha Museum to discover Aramaic, Syriac and Byzantine chants with the Lebanese singer Abir Nehme. An expert musicologist who knows the subtleties of sacred music and Lebanese tarab well, Abir Nehme embodies the ancient emotion of Syriac chants and the Aramaic language, which is considered an endangered language. Driven by personal faith and a passion for spirituality, Abir Nehme attempts to revive, through song, this language that has its origins in Antiquity. Indeed, Aramaic, which was the language spoken by Jesus Christ, eventually became the majority language among Jews in Palestine and elsewhere in the Middle East around 200 AD and until the Arab conquest in the 7th century. With her angelic voice that pushes spirits to wander beyond daily thoughts, Abir Nehme masterfully performed in Aramaic and Arabic pieces that praise Christ, the Virgin Mary and divine love. These include, among others, "Halleluia", "Ya Maryam", or "Halel, Halel", titles she drew from a repertoire marked by Christian, Oriental and Arab diversity.

Animated by the extremely vivid memory of a biblical Middle East, she combines past and present through her singing and draws from a sacred and contemplative liturgy. Carrying within her the Gregorian and Orthodox vocal heritage, she is also constantly in search of discovering the richness of the world's traditions while remaining deeply attached to her own. Representing tolerance between religions and a modern openness turned towards ideas of universal grandeur and majesty, Abir Nehme concluded her remarkable meeting with the Fes Festival audience with "Al'Taryak'Ito", a traditional Syriac chant taken from the book of religious offices "Shimo". Before Abir Nehme, the audience of the Fes Festival of World Sacred Music was captivated by the performance of another female figure, the Mauritanian Coumbane Mint Ely Warakane, who performed on Sunday 9 June at the Batha Museum. A worthy heir to the great masters of the art of Mauritanian griots, Coumbane Mint Ely Warakane gave the Fes Festival spectators a unique acoustic experience, discovering the art of Mauritanian griots, this singular art representative of a Mauritania that remains the link between white and black Africa. Both scholarly and classical, the art of Mauritanian griots is the expression of Hassani culture. Like all traditional poetry, it is also the fruit of a revelation and the extraordinary point of convergence between the Arab-Berber universe and the black universe of West Africa. With her charismatic sweetness and her raw, passionate voice, which becomes hallucinatory when it intertwines with frantic hand-clapping, Coumbane Mint Ely Warakane praised the ancient dignitaries of the tribes, evoking the warriors and encampments of yesteryear. Singing popular poetry in Hassaniyya (dialectal Arabic), and classical poems like the old "qasidas", a sort of epic in classical Arabic, Coumbane Mint Ely Warakane succeeded in enchanting the audience with a magical performance of which only she holds the secret.

The artistic journey of the Fes Festival of World Sacred Music continued on Tuesday 11 June with the Moroccan singer Aicha Redouane, who presented to the public an artistic project entitled "Aman, the waters". Passionate about Arab music and tarab, Aicha Redouane returns to her Amazigh roots through this project, which she says represents a tribute to her grandparents who gave her their love and taught her, with wisdom, respect for life. From the vigour of the mountain to the gentle murmur of the stream, Aicha Redouane enchanted the Fes public with the sharpened timbre of her voice, frail and dramatic. Inhabited by the mountainous immensity of the Atlas and the pride of the poetic declamations sung by proud Amazigh women, she sang with grace and sweetness of the purity of water and its origin.