National Geographic: Morocco's Six Best Music Festivals

Rabat – Renowned US cultural and nature magazine National Geographic has put Morocco’s music scene in the spotlight with a ranking of the country’s six best music festivals.

With Morocco’s COVID-19 epidemic under control the country’s music scene is preparing to renew cultural activities including a variety of music festivals.

National Geographic writer Emma Gregg considers the up-scale Transahara festival as the best festival in the country.

She points to the festival’s “secret location in the Erg Chebbi Dunes near Merzouga ,” and the “ambient electronica and psychedelic beats” by foreign artists as the primary selling point of the famous festival, which she compares to the “burning man” festival in the US.

Rabat’s Mawazine Rhythms of the World Festival is listed second on Gregg’s ranking. The nine-day festival in Morocco’s capital “is thoroughly international: global stars play to huge crowds at the OLM Souissi,” she writes. National Geographic highlighted how the Rabat festival, which features several cities across the metropolis, is 10 times the size of the UK’s famous Glastonbury festival.

The World Sacred Music Festival in Fez takes the third spot in the National Geographic ranking, as a “shining star of Morocco’s cultural calendar.” The article highlights the festival’s immense diversity and its crosscultural and interreligious appeal which make the event a unique experience.

A notable omission from the top three is the Essaouira Gnawa World Music Festival, a favorite among Morocco’s youth and less-affluent festivalgoers as a low-cost celebration of Moroccan and African music in the atmospheric city of Essaouira.

National Geographic describes the festival as “daily concerts by top Gnawa groups alongside guest stars from West Africa and beyond, playing a stimulating mix of jazz, folk, reggae and blues.”

Rounding out the ranking are the bohemian yet-glitzy Oasis Festival in Marrakech catering to the international electronic music scene, and Morocco’s famous Jazz festival, the Jazzablanca festival in Casablanca.