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Rabat – The Essaouira Atlantic Andalusia Festival will feature Said Belcadi, Sanaa Marahati, Andalucious and Hapiyout, and Haja El Hamdaouia and Raymonde El Bidaouia tonight.
The festival, which opened earlier this week on October 25, continues to celebrate the “glorious and harmonious” past of the Judeo-Arabic memory and will galvanize fans and first time festival-goers in the last two days, organizers noted in an email shared with Morocco World News.
Essaouira, a coastal city south of Casablanca, has long been a symbol of tolerance and socio-religious coexistence. According to Essaouira Mogador, the festival organizers, the city was the epitome of cultural exchange and religious dialogue.
The remaining two days of the festival are set to continue in that direction of peaceful coexistence by “celebrating the Judeo-Islamic heritage of the Maghreb region.”
Today’s program is scheduled to start at 4 p.m.. The first concert will be dedicated to the Andalusian poetic tradition. Moroccan singer Said Belcadi will immerse festival goers in the lyrically engrossing and spiritually enlivening poetry of Andalusia.
The concert is expected to deliver an exceptional commemoration of the love and mysticism-loaded Andalusian poetry, organizers noted. It will be “a celebration of love and cultural encounters” through the thrilling power of poetry.
At 5 p.m., Sanaa Marahati, a Moroccan master of traditional Melhoun and Gharnati music, will perform “a short foray into a history filled with vibrant memories of joy and sharing.”
The penultimate concert of the day, at 9 p.m., will see a blending of voices, “a mixture of genres” to give a real feel of harmony when Judeo-Arabic verses of lyrical poetry are performed at once. That part of entertaining and educating through mingling different cultural expressions will be performed by Andalucious and Hapiyout, two bands whose musical styles cross boundaries between Islamic and Jewish musical traditions.
Haja ElHamdaouia and Raymonde El Bidaouia, two strong voices in the Andalusian music genre, will give a joint performance, giving a final touch of “memorabilia” to the 15th anniversary of the first Essaouira Festival.
The event closes its doors tomorrow, October 28, at 11 a.m. with the screening of “Les Guerriers de la paix” (The Peace Warriors), a 2018 movie on Jews and Palestinians foregrounding dialogue and putting their lives on the line for peace between Palestine and Israel.
More than a mere nostalgic remembrance of a harmonious and joyous past between Muslim and Jewish Moroccans, however, organizers emphasized that the Essaouira Festival seeks to project itself in a future of peace between Jews and Arabs.
Through classics of shared musical and poetic traditions, the festival envisions celebrating the possibility of peace and dialogue though cultural forms that transcend divisive rhetoric.
