Themes > Arts > Music > Vocal Music > Festival of World Sacred Music

by Anastasia Tsioulcas

2001 marked the seventh season of Morocco's Fes Festival of World Sacred Music (June 1-9). In Fes, the medieval and the modern coexist in extraordinarily close quarters. In the course of an hour, it's possible to see craftsmen tanning and dyeing leather in a method unchanged since the 16th century in Fes El Bali, the oldest part of the city, and then relax over coffee at a busy sidewalk café along a wide, French-built avenue in the Ville Nouvelle. It's an endlessly fascinating place whose local culture is so special even within Morocco that the city itself has been designated as one of UNESCO's "cultural heritage sites" in order to preserve its unique character.
Where else, then, would be a more appropriate venue for a music festival that embraces both the old and the new? From Sister Marie Keyrouz performing Syrian, Maronite, and Byzantine chant, to Bolivian vocalist Luzmila Carpio singing traditional Quechan ritual music, to the gospel music of the Edwin Hawkins Singers, the festival's offerings are always eclectic, to say the least. Past years' participants have included baritone José van Dam, The Dufay Collective, South Africa's vocalist Miriam Makeba, and the Greek singer Angelique Ionatos.
Music of the Muslim world (and most particularly the mystical Islamic Sufi tradition) comprises a large part of the programming, from little-heard Moroccan brotherhoods of ecstatic singers and dancers to some of the most acclaimed vocalists and instrumentalists on the world music scene. This year, the exhilarating Pakistani singer Abida Parveen enraptured Fes' crowds with love poetry and hymns of praise. (Even if you're not familiar with her tradition, be sure to see her when she tours the United States, which she has been doing every other year or so.) Other performers included the elegant Al-Kindi Ensemble, based in Syria and led by the French-born qanun (zither) virtuoso Julien Jallaleddine Weiss, and the charismatic vocalist Sheikh Ahmad Al-Tûni, whose ecstatic improvisations made the 3,800-seat Bab Makina seem a warm and intimate venue. These Muslim artists vary tremendously in style, but what they share is a sense of rootedness in history. Passed down from generation to generation orally, this music, like old Fes itself, has remained largely untouched by time, though each artist is challenged to be an innovator, to leave an individual stamp on the music, while honoring the tradition.
Over the years, Western early music has become a favorite at Fes. Along with Sister Marie Keyrouz, this year's lineup included Jordi Savall and the Hesperion XXI Ensemble; Spain's choir Laudes Capilla Gregoriana (performing with flamenco artist Enrique Morente); the French-based Naguila Ensemble; and Italy's Micrologus Ensemble. One of the most welcome aspects of seeing some of these artists perform in Fes was the chance to examine their work in a fresh light. Hearing their repertoire alongside the music of the other performers--particularly the North African artists--provides a larger context for understanding the theoretical and stylistic conventions of medieval European music. By dint of history and geography, the artistic worlds of medieval Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East are not so far from each other, a fact underscored by hearing these performances in such close proximity, whether by virtue of tonally akin Western modalities and the maqamat (tonal systems) of the Arab classical repertoire, instrumentation ('uds versus lutes, the widespread use of frame drums), or the styles of ornamentation. (This idea has been long explored by the often controversial choral leader and musicologist Marcel Pérès, himself a past Fes participant, who seeks to link the music of the Eastern Christian churches with the early Western sacred repertoire.)
Enrique Morente's Flamenco Mass, featuring the Laudes Capilla Gregoriana choir, juxtaposed chanted portions of the Latin Mass with his own, flamenco-based compositions that used texts from St. John of the Cross, Lope de Vega, and Luis de Leon. It seemed more a work in progress than a finished piece: structurally, it lacked coherence and his fine troupe of flamenco singers and instrumentalists were grossly underused (we mostly heard Morente himself singing). The Naguila Ensemble, performing at the Batha Museum, offered an enjoyable collection of Sephardic songs, but the lethargy of an extremely hot and sunny afternoon at this outdoor concert seemed to overwhelm the artists as much as the listeners. Micrologus' "O Yesus Dolce", a program of 14th-century Italian laudi, highlighted the ensemble's careful attention to scholarship as well as its fine artistic sensibility. At that morning's press conference, the Micrologus members spoke articulately and passionately about the process of creating historically informed performances of the laudi, which was an oral tradition. Their need to "reconstruct" a lost form offers thought-provoking contrasts to the non-Western artists' performances, which are all historically informed, albeit to greater or lesser degrees.
I couldn't attend Sister Marie Keyrouz' performance, but was told by a number of very reliable sources that her performance was disappointing. Although her voice is as glorious as ever, her program ("Chants of Jerusalem: Psalms for the Third Millennium"), featured overblown arrangements that combined a Middle Eastern instrumental ensemble and Western piano, cello, and violin. I had planned to arrive at the festival specifically in time to hear Jordi Savall, but the vagaries of the highly unpleasant national airline Royal Air Maroc (RAM)--one of the festival's official sponsors--forced me to miss the concert, as the flight was delayed for nearly two days! If you're planning to go to Fes, your best bet is to take one of the European carriers; you'll save yourself a lot of trouble in the long run.
Music isn't the only festival attraction. Events are grouped around a common theme--this year's was "Giving Soul to Globalization". The concerts were supplemented by films and symposia that featured a host of international contributors who ranged from a World Bank official and a French former Economic Minister to the former dean of New York's Cathedral of St. John the Divine and a chief from the Six Nations Iroquois Confederacy. And of course Fes' breathtaking beauty and unique character is a major draw as well. The festival's three main concert sites are all extraordinarily beautiful: the Bab Makina, one of the 14 lavishly tiled gates that leads into the old city; the lush rose- and bamboo-filled courtyard of the Batha, a restored palace that now houses a museum of arts and crafts; and the magnificently preserved Roman ruins of the city of Volubilis, about an hour and a half's drive from Fes.

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