From 28 to 30 December, Essaouira is hosting the first edition of the Jazz under the Argan Tree Festival. For three days, music lovers will be treated to several music concerts that will take them through all the delights of jazz at the crossroads of other worlds. You will dance to a bit of everything: jazz, rock, pop, Gnaoua, swing, funk...
Jazzy tunes, tinged with African sounds and extremely rhythmic. This is what the first edition of the Jazz under the Argan Tree Festival offers us with breathtaking performances. With an eclectic programme, concocted with love for music lovers, the Festival, scheduled from 28 to 30 December in the City of Trade Winds, will offer the public in Essaouira exceptional moments with stars of the genre from here and elsewhere. It is a new and unique musical event that "finds refuge" in Essaouira. "In order to end the year in style, Essaouira offers a unique musical moment through the sounds of jazz, from standards to experimental, including world jazz, the Jazz under the Argan Tree Festival is a musical initiation that takes you on a journey to Dar Souiri during the day and to the Sofitel Essaouira Mogador Golf in the evening," indicates the Essaouira Mogador Association in a press release regarding this first edition of the Jazz under the Argan Tree Festival.
From Majid Bekkas who will open the ball to Mahmoud Chouki, alias Mood, at the closing of the event, Essaouira will vibrate for three days to the rhythms of music that is spiritedly swaying and skilfully soaring. On the programme for this first edition, the public will be treated to a unique concert by Tarik Hilal, a great talented guitarist, and Nabylaa Maan, both used to covering Andalusian standards in a jazz version. There will also be the Othman El Kheloufi Band which combines the joys of Chaâbi with jazz and Les Frères Souissi who will revisit a selection of favourites of the genre's standards. Young talents feature prominently in the list of guests for the event. Thus, the people of Essaouira will be able to discover live the best hits from the first album of the singer Jihane Bougrine, "Loon bladi", a tasty mix of jazz. She will perform the preview of the tribute that the Festival pays at Dar Souiri to the great Gnaoui Maâlem Mahmoud Guinea, who passed away this year.
Through this rich and varied programme, the edition thus offers music that will gain in power and emotion as it is listened to. We will discover colourful arrangements, original, mind-blowing and warm styles. This is, moreover, the objective of the Festival which invites the public in Essaouira to share treasures of sensations and emotions in a spirit of tolerance and celebration, for the duration of a festival dedicated to jazz and its thousand and one facets. "Accustomed to festivals and musical events, Essaouira deemed it necessary to add an event that celebrates jazz through big names, but above all new talents," specify the organisers. For the music-loving and curious public, the Festival offers a good opportunity to see and hear jazz in all its states. All this will nourish a joyful atmosphere that will spread throughout the City of Trade Winds. What a journey!
