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Join on Telegram Rabat – The Mawazine Festival has served as a platform for promoting Rabat as a multicultural and cosmopolitan city since it first attracted international musicians to Morocco’s capital in 2001. Organizers hoped this year’s edition – the first since the pandemic – would restore the festival to the lofty heights it has achieved in the past, where international artists like Avicii attracted over 200,000 attendees.
However, attendances have failed to meet expectations so far this year, with many attributing low crowd numbers to boycotts of the festival in solidarity with the Palestinian cause.
Messages calling for a boycott of the festival appear to have originated on social media pages throughout Morocco, culminating in a protest during the evening of May 5th in which thousands took to the streets of Tangier, chanting ironically “What does Palestine need? Parties and Mawazine?” Energy around this protest movement increased as, during the last few weeks, videos have emerged on social media which present themselves as Gazans asking Moroccans to boycott the Mawazine festival.
This grassroots political movement was later co-opted by Abdelilah Benkirane, the Secretary General of the Justice and Development Party (PJD), an opposition political group that advocates for political Islam. Mr. Benikrane, who served as Morocco’s Prime Minister from November 2011 to March 2017, issued a video address on May 22nd urging authorities to cancel the festival since “the situation is not honorable for us as an Arab and Islamic nation.”
A Controversial Festival
While Mawazine projects images of a modern Morocco around the globe, internally the festival has often been marred by controversy.
Much of this has centered on how the festival has been funded. While corporate sponsorships and – to a lesser extent – ticket sales have always contributed to revenue, the first 5 editions of the festival were 60% financed by the government through the municipality of Rabat. This drain on public finances created calls for boycotts as detractors argued the money could be better spent on public services. Thereafter, the festival accepted less and less public money until in 2012 it made the decision to not accept any public funds at all.
According to the organizers, the festival is now 100% financed through corporate donations and ticket sales, where the largest corporate sponsors – such as ONCF, Royal Air Maroc, Maroc Telecom and Royale Marocaine D’Assurance – are affiliates of the state.
While these companies have fiduciary responsibilities to their other shareholders, the nature of the Moroccan economy leaves many feeling that the festival received significant state support at a time when the money is sorely needed elsewhere.
“People think it’s rude and selfish to have fun at a huge event like that when their muslim brothers and sisters are going through so much,” said Malak Tahiri, a first year nursing student at the International University of Rabat. “Not even mentioning the millions of Dirhams spent on it when it could’ve been used for a better cause.”
One area often cited as sorely needing the money is the High Atlas mountainous region near Al-Haouz, where hundreds of villages were largely destroyed by a magnitude 6.8 earthquake last September. Many of the 500,000 people displaced are still living in refugee camps and those affected have criticized the government as promised monthly relief payments and one-time rebuilding assistance haven’t materialized.
Caption: Central Cee performing to a larger crowd on the Olm Souissi stage on Thursday evening
A Boycott For What Cause?
During the 2015 edition of Mawazine, then Prime Minister Benkirane ordered an investigation into the television broadcast of Jennifer Lopez’s set, calling the performance “provocative” and saying that it contained “disgraceful scenes.” Benkirane added that the “sexually suggestive” staging was in violation of Morocco’s audiovisual law which the High Authority for Audiovisual Communication (HACA) claims is designed to preserve the right of viewers to access “trustworthy, vigilant, and safe media content.”
An educational group did file a lawsuit against Lopez a little over a week after her performance. Although the singer was always unlikely to face legal consequences as a result of the suit, allegations of ‘disturbing public order’ could have – in theory – landed Lopez with a two-year prison sentence.
Ideologically-driven sentiment against the festival seems to have reduced since the PJD has been replaced as the ruling party of the Moroccan government by the National Rally of Independents (RNI), who self-identify as social-democratic. Nevertheless, it is difficult for an international audience to place current calls for a boycott of the festival in context given an extended history of critique.
Caption: A still captured from IAMDDB’s intermission video, in which she danced provocatively, smoked what was implied to be cannabis, and displayed “#FREE PALESTINE.”
New Attitudes and Old Causes
Going into the final weekend of the festival, several of the larger international artists have attracted sizable crowds. The British rapper Central Cee attracted thousands to his Thursday performance at the Olm Souissi stage near Rabat’s Sofitel hotel, impressing the crowd with hits “Sprinter” and “Doja.”
Central Cee was supported by the British-Angolan singer and rapper IAMDDB, who delivered an explicit performance which – while not televised – perhaps illustrates how significantly attitudes have changed since Lopez’s performance in 2015.
During an intermission, IAMDDB projected a video from her most recent album “LOVE is WAR.” The largely male audience jeered to the scenes of her provocative dancing and revealing outfits while the artists’ question to the audience “where my girls at?” was met with little response.
As the intermission video faded the slogans “#FREE SUDAN, #FREE PALESTINE, #FREE CONGO” were displayed in bold white lettering on an all-black screen. “#FREE PALESTINE” got the loudest cheer of the night.
