Music makes the world go round

One week after rocking to lively music in Southwest Germany, I joined a very different musical atmosphere at the International festival of world sacred musics in Fez. The theme of the Fez festival this year was the transmission of traditions and heritage. In a musical form, transmission is usually most easily achieved through repetitive melodies and harmonic patterns. The music I listened to over the week-end was therefore mainly of the repetitive sort, whether traditional or contemporary. In its sacred form, repetitive music can lead to a state of mystic transe; I did not witness any swooning or twirling though.

The weather in Fez last week-end went from hot to very hot. My Chinese paper fan was a very welcome implement during the outdoor concerts. On my last day, I stayed all day inside the relative cool of the inner courtyard of my traditional hotel Riad Myra to avoid the heat outside radiating from walls and roads until the evening concerts. 

The festival organisers had set up a canopy sheet above the audience in the Jnan Sbil garden. When a breeze would blow through it, the canopy would rise and fall slowly like a wave in a very poetic manner, and a fitting movement to accompany the live music.

I saw concerts of contemporary Western and Oriental classical music, jazz, and also a string quartet of traditional instrument players coming from 3 different countries along the silk roads of Central and Eastern Asia. There was also a magical show of Khmer traditional dances in the setting of a traditional Fassi house.

I joined close to 5000 other people within the fortified Al Makina door of the Fez walls to listen to Oriental music mega star Sami Yusuf. I had bought tickets for the two nights Sami Yusuf was playing thinking from the programme notes that the content would be different. Both nights turned out to be exactly the same music and show. However, my experience of the two concerts was very different. On the Saturday night, I was seated closer to the stage but in the middle of a group of same-levelled chairs. This meant I could not see the stage at all. I spent most of the concert trying to get a glimpse of the stage through heads and mobile phones filming the artists. However, the sound experience was very good right in the middle of the audience. All my neighbours seemed to know the songs by heart and this first concert felt like sitting in the middle of the show's backing choir. The Sunday night concert was advertised as fully booked so I arrived earlier to choose a better seat. This time, I was farther away from the stage but in a row that was higher up one step from the seats in front; this meant I could actually see what was happening on stage. Unfortunately, the sound balance was not as good on the second night or my seat was just not at the right spot within the audience; the sound kept shooting to loud booms every now and again. My neighbours on the second night did not know the songs or were too shy to sing out so this second experience was more passive and not as fulfilling for me.

Music makes the world go round
Hamilton Brothers