Visit Fez

Rebirth implies the idea of a new life. Such is the case with civilizations and peoples, whose History bears witness to an eternal cycle of creation - destruction - reconstruction. Man, driven by a process of anamnesis, has constantly had to turn back on himself, to set out again in search of his origin. And it is in this place, in the crucible of the primordial source, that we find nature - a nature that was linked to the sacred, from Greek and Indian philosophies to the height of monotheistic religions.

Once a city of knowledge, Fez was symbolized by the Quaraouiyine, the oldest university in the world. From its construction in 263 AH, it spread throughout Africa and the Muslim world knowledge inherited from ancient Greece, just as Florence and the Italian Renaissance would later rediscover the art of Antiquity.

One of the main axes of this programming, like that of creation, will therefore be the expression of a constant crossing between Africa on one side, Morocco at the center, and the Western Renaissance which will see the birth of new musical approaches even before the advent of the Baroque.

Africa, for its part, will be celebrated through the creativity of its performances with the Ivorian Zaouli dance from Manfla, the tradition of the Stilt Walkers, the essential Drums of Burundi. A Night of Griots will take us on the paths of the Mandingo Empire, from Mali to Ghana, while the Sufi rituals of the Mourides of Senegal will echo the Fassi Tijāniyya brotherhood.

This edition will also reveal diverse feminine expressions, particularly in the Sufi universe of deba - governed mainly by the women of Mayotte, women's identity quest through the poetry of these "4 women", coming from different Orients, the classical Persian songs of young Iranian artists or the feminine tradition of the bards of Kazakhstan. The sensitive connection suggested by the Sevillian twins Florencia Oz and Isidora O'Ryan in the magnificent duo "Antipodas", reveals once again the current creativity that exists in contemporary flamenco. A flamenco whose value comes from the richness of its historical and poetic roots, those that will be magnificently embodied by the great Miguel Poveda. An artist who expresses like no other that duende, so well described by Lorca, the duende of dueño: "the master" in Spanish, here of our emotions. Musical and poetic ecstasy, similar to the "tarab" of Arab culture when listening to the "motreb" (in Arabic literally "the one who gives emotion"), that which precisely this festival tirelessly tries to share.