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Fès Festival of World Sacred Music |
One of the world's top cultural and musical events, the annual Fès Festival of World Sacred Music brings together a wide range of performers, artists and intellectuals from around the globe for nine days in June in Morocco's most historic city. The theme for the 17th festival was "Wisdoms of the World" and the musical performers included big names like Youssou N'dour and Ben Harper and many interesting, less famous musicians. (If I attend this festival again, I will get a press pass so that I can attend more performances for free and make a full coverage of the events.) The festival organized around 50 musical performances, including Sufi nights and free performances for the Moroccan public, as well as film screenings and art exhibits. Two performances that rocked the casbah were Syubbanul Akhyar, a group from Java that blends Arabic and Indonesian music in a totally electrifying way, and Barroco D'Asuncion, a young Paraguyan group that plays classical Baroque music infused with indigenous Latin American sounds. In a festival that tends to take itself a little too seriously (with sponsorship and appearances by Morocco's royal family, apparently it cannot be otherwise), these groups were refreshingly free of pretension and brought a positive, down-to-earth energy to the mix. Both performances brought the houses down, or rather up, high as a kite. The festival also included the Fès Forums, which bring together groups of intellectuals and artists for morning roundtable discussions. The theme for this year's forum revolved around the wisdoms needed for our times in light of the staggering changes around the world, such the Arab Spring and the future for democracy in the middle east, climate change and corruption at all levels. The panelists included filmmakers Costa Gravas and Yann Arhus-Bertrand, French philosophers Edgar Morin and Patrick Viveret, and many others in the humanities and politics. Some of the most memorable thoughts came from the French philosophers. Edgar Morin recognized the forces pushing us in the first world into hyper-specific professions (and obsessions) and warned of a world that is over-regulated and lacking in curiousity, compassion and imagination. Patrick Viveret added that the real battle we face now is against internal degradation from all the "pornographies" the modern world creates for us—from Wall Street to television to technology—and that the wisdom needed for our times is not "out there" somewhere but is elemental to what makes us human. Going further, he said that our goal shouldn't be "to wait to fall in love" but rather "to raise ourselves to love" as a way of engaging with the world. Both philosophers agreed that interior silence and personal responsibility for one's self, one's community and country are all essential for the times ahead. And, of course, so are love, respect and humility. A shared belief was that in a globalized world the "Other" no longer exists, which is the spiritual essence of the festival itself. I was fortunate to spend some time with Michel Thao Chan, a French Buddhist and Sufi of Vietnamese descent who is interested in how sounds connect with our subconscious. Sitting at an outdoor café filled with tough Moroccan men smoking cigarettes and nursing glasses of mint tea, Michael mapped out human consciousness and behavior for me as set forth by one of the Buddha's disciples. Based on the huge reservoir of my own life experiences and what artists and writers concerned with consciousness (like Joseph Campell) have written about, it made perfect sense and clarified my understanding of what is going on beneath the surface at both the individual and collective levels. For me, this small chance meeting was the best gift of the festival. |
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