Night in the Medina  II

Tuesday 10 May

Prefecture hall– 23.00

Parvathy Baul and Mehdi Nassouli – India and Morocco Poetry of Wandering Mystics: from Bauls to Gnawas

Tell me, Fool,

What are you looking for on the roads of the world?

Look in your room and you will find the jewel …

The same cosmic game is played in the human body,

Just like the moon hides behind the clouds.

To know the self, this is to pray.

He who knows the Invisible, says Lalan,

Knows where to go.

• Fakir Lalan Shah

Poetess Parvathy Baul whirls with her arms outstretched to the sky, caught in the spiral of a breeze that frees the spirit. She projects her being almost as healing, while reciting vague mystical poetry. She is truly an enchantress from another world.

Young Mehdi Nassouli believes that his Gnawa heritage gives him great musical inspiration.

The Bauls (from the Sanskrit vatul, literally ‘fool’, drunk with divine aspiration) are the last great nomadic mystics of the world. They dance somewhere between heaven and earth, between poetic ecstasy and carnal reality. They are not far away from the universe of the Gnawas, whose roots go deep into ancestral African trance.