Under the aegis of the Le Grand Atlas Association (AGA), chaired by Professor Mohamed Knidiri, and organized by the Hmiti Association for Culture and Artistic Creation, in partnership with the Ministry of Youth, Culture and Communication (Department of Culture), and in coordination with the Marrakech Municipal Council and the Marrakech-Safi Regional Council, this Festival will see the participation of ten Gnaoua masters from different regions of the Kingdom.
The 8th edition of the Gnaoua Show will reach new heights from May 8 to 10, 2025, and will sumptuously brighten the famous Jemaa El Fna square in the ochre city with artistic performances reminiscent of the profound Negro Spiritual, which invites the spirit and soul of the ancestors to orchestrate and provide the true measure of these Afro music and dances.
The organizers have the ambition to make it a unique opportunity for world music encounters in the future at an international level. The Gnaoua Show, like the American Negro Spiritual and even long before, is experiencing a meteoric rise across the planet.
These songs and dances have always symbolized the voice and history of an oppressed people whose music was the only outlet; many songs allude to the arrival of ancestors on African and finally American soil. This practice of choral singing developed mainly in rural areas and was expressed during field work and nocturnal gatherings with family and friends. The importance of rhythm, the slowness, and the absence of orchestration millennia ago have undergone a spectacular metamorphosis. These songs and dances have become more rhythmic with a highly feverish crescendo of instrumental accompaniment—music and dances that raise awareness about issues of slavery, civil rights, justice, otherness, and cultural globalization, while respecting the secularism inherent in the nature of each country. There is no proselytism, but a unique and particularly fruitful cultural experience across the four corners of the globe.
Brilliantly served by talented soloists and vocal ensembles with refined arrangements by 10 famous Mâalems, including Mâalem Othman Hmitti, this 8th edition of the Gnaoua Show Festival, like the Negro Spiritual, is also of folkloric and popular origin... inviting the public to dive into the spiritual and extraordinary phenomenon of breath, content, meaning, and spirituality through the liberating power of this Afro music, whose fertility is today celebrated worldwide.
