In its fifth year, Festival de Fès des Musiques Sacrées du Monde is held each June in Fès, Morocco. Its stated goal is to features music which expresses “Les Hautes Lieux de l’Esprit,” and as such presents musicians from across the world who travel to Fès expressly to perform their sacred music in a festival context. A sampling of the performers in prior years reveals that over half are from North Africa. 

            This June Morocco will also host the Festival d’Essaouira: Musiques de Transe. This festival seeks to showcase and celebrate the musical culture of a particular group of sacred musicians, the Gnawa, described in the festival brochure as, “généralement les descendents d’anciens esclaves issus de populations orginaires d’Afrique Noire.” The Gnawa are an interesting case study in analyzing the recontextualization of sacred music as historically members of the subaltern group were often viewed with suspect, if not contempt. In recent years, however, they have performed with many well known jazz musicians such as Randy Weston, Pharaoh Sanders and Don Cherry. Twenty years ago the only available Gnawa recordings were as part of a sample of Moroccan music recorded for the academy. In the last few years over twenty albums of Gnawa music has been commercially released, and more recordings are planned. The Festival d’Essaouira: Musiques de Transe began in 1998 — no doubt fueled in part by the current interest in Gnawa sacred music.

            With this renewed interest in the holy, however, comes new situations which challenge conventional or simplistic delineations of the sacred and the profane. This phenomenon is clearly visible with music, unique among sacred practices for its aesthetic appeal, and its ability—while not a universal language in the strict communicative sense—to cross cultural, geographical, religious, temporal and stylistic boundaries. In a June 4, 1998 issue of The New York Times Gerard Kurdjian, Artistic Director of the Festival de Fès des Musiques Sacrées du Monde, said: “Ritual aspects have to be performed in specific places...When you take them out of those places, they lose their meaning.  But the sacred is something much larger than the liturgical and ritual.  The thread that links them is the emotion that all these musics provoke in the heart of the listener.”

            Kurdjian draws a distinction between the liturgical and the sacred, yet removing sacred musics from their respective “specific places” raises additional questions, inquests which are particularly relevant and compelling in a North African Islamic context where the distinctions between sacred and secular are less clear.  How is sacred distinguished from secular in North African music?; Once defined, what occurs when sacred music is recontextualized?; What happens when third parties, such as record labels and concert promoters, mediate the re-presentation of sacred music for commercial gains?; How do the musicians who perform sacred music negotiate this debated terrain?; And, finally, how does the interest in sacred music both mirror and distinguish itself from the recent focus on world music in general?

            These interesting and relevant questions will take increasing dimension in the future.  No doubt due in part to the success of other sacred music festivals, new festivals which feature sacred music are either planned or underway, e.g., London-based world music organization Music Village is planned a festival this year entitled Sacred Voices, and His Holiness the Dalai Lama announced plans for an upcoming sacred music festival to be held in Switzerland.

            Analyzing these two festivals will be beneficial in order to get both the macro and micro manifestations of festivalized sacred music. Moreover, the Fès festival is well-established, whereas the Essaouria festival is only in its second year, permitting comparison of festival maturity as well. Using both the Festival de Fès des Musiques Sacrées du Monde and the Festival d’Essaouira: Musiques de Transe as a point of departure, and drawing on  my experience as a music writer for Texas cultural weekly The Austin Chronicle, this research project will investigate what happens when the religious is put on stage, specifically when sacred music is recontextualized and re-presented. Special attention will be given to the Gnawa of Morocco and other North African Sufi groups, and will incorporate interviews with musicians and producers such as Hassan Hakmoun and Bill Laswell.

            This research project has four goals: To view firsthand North African festivals which set out to re-present sacred music for spiritual, aesthetic and commercial ends; To speak with organizers, sponsors, fans and musicians about their experiences and impressions in the recontextualization of sacred music in North Africa; To analyze and understand what occurs to sacred musical forms and genres when recontextualized in a festival setting; And beginning with these contemporary examples, to chart where future research questions in the festivalization of sacred music should be directed.

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Selected References:

Abrahams, Roger D. and Richard Baumann. 1978. Ranges of festival behavior. The reversible world: symbolic inversion in art and society. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

Allen, Charlotte. 1996 . “Is Nothing Sacred: Casting Out The Gods From Religious Studies.” Lingua Franca, November 1996.

Baumann, Max Peter. 1996. Folk Music Revival: Concepts Between Regression and Emancipation. The World of Music 38 (3):71-86.

Bendix, Regina. 1989. Tourism and Cultural Displays: Inventing Traditions for Whom? Journal of American Folklore. 102 (404).

Crapanzano, Vincent. 1973. The Hamadsha: A Study in Moroccan Ethnopsychiatry. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Falassi, Alessandro. 1987. Festival: definition and morphology. Time out of time: essays on the festival. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.

Kirschenblatt-Gimblett, Barbara. 1988. Authenticity and Authority in the Representation of Culture: The Poetics of Politics of Tourist Production. In Kulturkontakt, Kulturkonflikt: Zur Erfahrun des Fremden, Ina-Maria Greverus, Konrad Köslin and Heinz Schilling, eds.

Smith, Robert Jerome. 1975. The art of the festival. Lawrence: University of Kansas Press.

Stoeltje, Beverly. 1983. Festival in America. Handbook of American folklore. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

———. 1988. Festival. Encyclopedia of communications. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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            My research plan consists of three phases: archival work; fieldwork and presentation of results via a final written thesis. At this point a significant amount of background research has been completed under the guidance of Professor Deborah Kapchan at the University of Texas at Austin. This travel grant will support necessary North African archival and field research. Additional qualitative and quantitative data will be gathered in Morocco from transcribed and coded interviews with musicians, organizers, sponsors and attendees of the two sacred music festivals. The final product will be a research thesis that will in part fulfill my doctoral requirements. Research results will also be submitted for future publication, and for presentation at relevant conferences and colloquia.    

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26 May 99       Fly from Austin, Texas to Casablanca, Morocco

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26 May 99       Travel via train from Casablanca to Fès

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27 May 99-      Research and Festival de Fès des Musiques Sacrées du Monde in Fès

18 June 99

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19 June 99       Travel via train from Fès to Essaouria

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23 June 99-      Research and Festival d’Essaouira: Musiques de Transe in Essaouria

27 June 99

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28 June 99       Travel via train from Essaouria to Casablanca

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29 June 99       Fly from Casablanca, Morocco to Austin, Texas

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Please see French research summary on enclosed separate page.

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Robert A. Fernea, Ph.D.                                               Deborah A. Kapchan, Ph.D.

         Professor of Anthropology                                            Director, Center for Intercultural Studies in

         University of Texas at Austin                                         Folklore and Ethnomusicology

         Email: fernea@mail.utexas.edu                                      Associate Professor of Anthropology

                                                                                             Email: kapchan@mail.utexas.edu