The 2003 World Sacred Music Festival is different than we expected, but what isn’t in this country?
It is within walking distance from our slightly run down hotel, Hotel Batha.
Starting from the entrance… the street is gated off for foot traffic to be routed on the far side of the street and festival entrance on the other. Sort of like what you would expect for a large concert, except there are only a hundred people or so on the street, many of them police in various uniforms. And, yes, unlike what we were told at our hotel, they do sell tickets at the gate.
We hand over our tickets to be torn off to the finely dressed men in suits at the Bab Mekina arched gateway at the medieval wall, then are ushered through a metal detector complete with bag scanner. The three coins in Derrell’s pocket set off the detector causing the usual reaction you get at an airport. Everyone is very cordial and we are thinking the bomb blast in Casablanca is triggering the extra security, since there are many Europeans and upper class Moroccans here.
The concert is in the courtyard between the two arched gates and there are about six white festival tents setup similar to those at any state fair or farmer’s market. One side holds the sponsors such as TV5, the otherside has three tents selling food: the first selling sodas. (I tried a bottle of Hawai soda which is similar to Fanta but without the saccahrin aftertaste, but still mighty sweet. They have Fanta and Coca-Cola everywhere here printed in Arabic and French which make them rather interesting to inspect.) The next kiosk over had chicken or sausage or ‘meat’ with onion and cabbage on a fine baguette. (Derrell snagged one of these the second night and gave them a positive thumbs up.) And the final tent is a huge arabic tent with red rugs on the ground and hanging inside, low chairs covered with slipcovers and small tables. Waiters are serving mint tea on silver platters with ornate glasses and small silver teapots. With the warm evening air swirling about at 9pm in the evening, this has a nice feel.
We pass through another set of ushers. The women are dressed like airline stewardesses, the men in suits. The festival seating is setup theater style with a special center section of about 6 rows. Section A for about 20 Euros and a section B on a raised platform behind for about 10 Euros. There is not many people 45 minutes before it starts, so we have a complete arena of seats to choose from. Two out of three nights they had pamphlets printed about the act, one time in English, the other in French, the first night not at all… a sure sign we are in Morocco.
Folks arrive in all sorts of dress. There are women in western wear, dresses with heels, jeans and t-shirts. There are men in suits and some in jeans, only one European in shorts and he looked only slightly out of place. Backpackers in the standard needs washing and a haircut look were sprinkled throughout. And in this crowd some girls wearing Indian saris, some from asia. Basically, a complete hodge-podge of people.
It is a calm event, similar to going to the theater to watch a play at a fine theater. Large lighting scafolding and a good speaker system hover over the stage that is covered in red Moroccan rugs and ornate pillows for the musicians. The backdrop is the second gateway that they have lit with red lighting giving a good contrast with the Arabic tiles proclaiming a verse of the Koran and the pattern of green mosaic covering the archway. It is a small venue that could be easily expanded to handle more patrons if the festival ever grows in size, but currently it looks like it could hold about 1000 people.
Our first night was the highlight so far. We listened to classical Iranian music given by Mohamed Reza Shajaran singing Mystical Songs of the Persian Radif. His voice was fantastic. There were three musicians with him sitting on pillows playing classical instruments that neither Derrell or I could name, one a lute, one a string and bow, one a drum, all sounding very mystical and beautiful.
The third night we listened to Sengal drumming. This was loud and active and colorful. It felt like a lurking lion may come up from behind and join in the tribal drumming and prancing with them.
The middle day was spent getting a ride out to the Voulibus for the concert at the Roman ruins. We knew it would be a long ride, but two hours in a Land Rover with 8 others in the heat of the day with all the windows open was a bit exhausting. This is after we were expecting to be riding in the airconditioned bus. Well it was cheap, a whole 15 Euros and you get what you get. We really wished we had more time to explore the ruins, we needed at least one to two hours. Instead the Land Rover stopped at Moulay Ibiss to see if we could check out the museum. There was some issue about getting in so everyone headed back over to the Voulibus instead.
The Voulibus venue is open air roman columns with no shade. The park has a postcard stand, tea cafe and WC (my first experience with a toilet without running water). We had grabbed a large bottle of water before we left and sitting in the sun after the scorching ride were quite glad to have it. Some folks must have been thinking about cooling it down too much because halfway through the concert just as the first artist was finishing up an afternoon thunderstorm cranked up. We ran under the VIP tent until that blew over, everyone was completely soaked. So we hid behind a roman column to keep the onslaught from soaking us. I had a spare plastic bag to keep our passports and camera from getting drenched, so we survived without too much complaining. The rain stopped, but the wind kept going. They went on with the concert and my body temperature went from above boiling to chilly in the course of a few hours. It was a clammy two hour ride back. We were stopped at a police checkpoint coming back into Fez and the guy asked our nationalities. A spaniard-moroccan next to us had rolled his eyes that he had climbed in without his passport on the way out, we didn’t understand this could be an issue until we were stopped on the way back. Yet another thing to learn in this country.
So that is the World Sacred Music festival in Fes. We have one more concert tonight and are looking forward to it.. the Whirling Dirvishes of Syria. Inshallah (if God so wills).
