tue 19/03/2024

theartsdesk in Fes: The World Sacred Music Festival | reviews, news & interviews

theartsdesk in Fes: The World Sacred Music Festival

theartsdesk in Fes: The World Sacred Music Festival

Sacred and other music in one of the world's great music festivals

Amadou and Mariam rock Bal Al MakinaFrederic Poletti

The interior world of Morocco seems a magical place where music and words have more power than in the disenchanted, cold light of the North. On the plane on my first trip to Fes I met a businessman, in import-export, wearing a Burton suit. The strangeness of Morocco revealed itself when he started telling me of his current problem, that his daughter has been put under a spell by a djinn (he translated the word as “devil”) residing in a frog. His mother was a member of the Hamdashas, sects who are known to cut themselves, and his grandmother, he said, drank boiling water when under trance. Some djinns are believers, are harmless; others, the non-believers (like the one causing trouble to the businessman’s daughter), are the ones that cause lots of trouble.

The interior world of Morocco seems a magical place where music and words have more power than in the disenchanted, cold light of the North. On the plane on my first trip to Fes I met a businessman, in import-export, wearing a Burton suit. The strangeness of Morocco revealed itself when he started telling me of his current problem, that his daughter has been put under a spell by a djinn (he translated the word as “devil”) residing in a frog. His mother was a member of the Hamdashas, sects who are known to cut themselves, and his grandmother, he said, drank boiling water when under trance. Some djinns are believers, are harmless; others, the non-believers (like the one causing trouble to the businessman’s daughter), are the ones that cause lots of trouble.

One of my favourite Moroccan proverbs is 'Haste comes from the devil, slowness comes from God.

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