The 22nd edition of the festival pays tribute to "Founding Women" through a creation that promises to be original and artists from diverse horizons for the greatest pleasure of "spiritual" music lovers.
Fès "the magnificent" is in a state of excitement. Today opens the 22nd edition of the Fès Festival of World Sacred Music, an international event now inscribed in the agenda of major artistic and cultural events on a global scale. A large number of artists from diverse horizons will perform, during the nine days of the festival (from 6 to 14 May), at the various festival sites, namely Bal al Makina, Dar Tazi, Place Boujloud, the Jnan Sbil Gardens, Batha Museum, Dar Mokri, and Dar Adiyel. A particularity of this 22nd edition, the festival is dedicated to "Founding Women", a theme inspired by the life and work of those who have marked history. The Festival of World Sacred Music also pays tribute this year to India, an opportunity for the artists of this particular country, from which many tales of the "Thousand and One Nights" originate, to present their creative genius.
On the programme for this edition, an apotheosis opening with a grandiose show conceived as a dream and directed by Alain Weber, where learned women, poetesses, mystics... will sparkle like so many stars of the Milky Way. It is Scheherazade, telling stories to her young sister Dunyazad, who will introduce the public to the story of all the legendary women from Mira Bai the Indian, Rabia Al Adawiya, Al Khansaa, to Balqis, the Queen of Sheba. It is female artists from Morocco, Mongolia, Azerbaijan, Iran, Ethiopia, India, Lebanon, Italy, and Africa who will illustrate this fresco titled "A sky full of stars" and enhanced by a large oriental orchestra and an animated image work, "mapping". Another highlight of the 2016 edition, a performance, which promises to be mesmerising, by the Andalusian music ensemble of master Mohamed Briouel and the whirling dervishes of Istanbul.
Lovers of oriental music will feast with the "Kawkab El Shark of Cairo" orchestra to pay tribute to Oum Kaltoum. Another diva will perform on the Bab Al Makina stage for the closing evening, the prodigious Samira Saïd.
In addition to the nocturnal evenings enlivened by musicians of the world, the 22nd edition of the festival will be marked by the organisation of the "Fès Forum" from 7 to 9 May, which will have as its setting, this year, the mythical Jnane Sbil Garden and will be divided into two parts: the first day will associate a galaxy of intellectuals with a reflection on the general theme of the edition, namely "Founding Women". The other two days will be led by the philosopher Yves Michaud and the Dean of the Faculty of Human Sciences of the Euro-Mediterranean University of Fès, Mohamed Metalsi. The opportunity to pay tribute notably to Fatima Mernissi, an eminent sociologist who passed away recently. Festival-goers will have the pleasure of discovering an unreleased film conceived especially for the festival by the director Aurélie Chauleur, which is titled "The little princes of Rajasthan" and which highlights the life of child musicians living in the heart of the Rajasthan desert in India. Prodigy children from the same Indian region, who have become masters of their tradition, will thus come to recite their songs before the children of the city of Fès.
