A Portuguese musical genre that takes the form of a melancholic song usually accompanied by plucked string instruments, Fado is an urban phenomenon, born in the 19th century in the port and working-class districts (Alfama, Mouraria, the Moorish quarter, or Bairro Alto) of Portugal thanks to sailors, who, through their travels, absorbed Arab songs and the ancient melodies of Afro-Brazilian slaves. Around 1870, Fado, with the great singer Severa, also became the preserve of an aristocracy fond of this poetic verve, before becoming the song of an entire people in the sixties thanks to the great Amalia Rodriguez. Ana Moura, a new iconic figure of Fado, carries within her the romantic and tragic sensitivity of a Fado deeply rooted in the city of Lisbon, where both feminine and masculine interpretations have asserted themselves. Her beauty, still barely touched by suffering, sings of an existential nostalgia, one she inherited from her passion at a very young age for a Fado she heard on the radio and in her family in Santarem in the Ribatejo province. Her adolescence led her to Carcavelos, on the outskirts of Lisbon, where, beyond a rock period (which she would later rediscover alongside Mick Jagger or Prince), she would affirm her passion for Fado. With a pure and endearing voice, Ana Moura was able to trigger emotion mixed with fascination in the Fès audience. Starting her performance with a song paying tribute to the Portuguese guitar, a musical instrument typical of Fado, Ana Moura followed up with titles of rare beauty, drawn from a deeply traditional repertoire, where the feeling of "Saudade" (a Portuguese word meaning a melancholy tinged with nostalgia, without the morbid aspect) refers to the notion of "destiny". Accompanying the singing with dance steps, Ana Moura evoked the nostalgia for the dead and the past, unfulfilled love, grief, or even the human condition. And because the Fès Festival caters to all tastes, El Gusto, a great Algiers Chaâbi orchestra, immersed the audience present on 11 May at the Batha Museum in a jovial and warm atmosphere. El Gusto, a Spanish word meaning taste, travelled with the Moors to North Africa and, like many other Spanish words, became integrated into the Algiers dialect. In the language of Algiers, El Gusto has become a true expression to describe "good humour, the joy of living." The orchestra was called El Gusto precisely because its musicians embody this joy of living in the city, that of meeting up with friends to sing Chaâbi music, dear to the people of Algiers.

At the origin of Algiers Chaâbi, at the heart of Arab-Andalusian and Judeo-Arab music, this great orchestra brings together the great masters and stars of a historical and jovial music, born in the Kasbah of Algiers. El Gusto, the Algerian version of the legendary Cuban group Buena Vista Social Club, enchanted the audience with a repertoire inspired by Arab-Andalusian music and poems written in the 15th century that mingled with the popular songs of the fishermen, dockers, and barbers of the Kasbah of Algiers. Pioneers of a new music, but also authors of some of its most beautiful melodies, these icons of Algerian Chaâbi are finally finding the recognition they were deprived of fifty years ago, with the Algerian war.

The Spanish group "Axivil Aljamía" performed on 13 June in Fès as part of the Festival of Sacred Music of the World, to the delight of rhythmic melodies. This ensemble, which bears the name of the Spanish composer Jucejj Axivil, presented to the public a creation titled "Perfume Mudéjar". It is an evocation of the music of the "Mudéjar" Muslim communities who remained in Andalusia until the 17th century. For eight centuries, until the final conquest of Granada in 1492, Islamic culture was present in the Iberian Peninsula, in the kingdoms and caliphates known under the generic name of Al-Andalus. The "Mudéjar" communities continued to sing and play Christian music in their own way and according to their own style. As for the Moorish songs of deeds, they sang them until their exile to North Africa, where many of them have survived to this day.

-* A Portuguese musical genre that takes the form of a melancholic song usually accompanied by plucked string instruments, Fado is an urban phenomenon born in the 19th century in the port and working-class districts of Portugal.

-* Around 1870, Fado, with the great singer Severa, also became the preserve of an aristocracy fond of this poetic verve, before becoming the song of an entire people in the sixties, thanks to the great Amalia Rodriguez.

-* Ana Moura, a new iconic figure of Fado, carries within her the romantic and tragic sensitivity of an art deeply rooted in the city of Lisbon.