Rabat – The 28th edition of the Fez Festival of Sacred Music opens this Friday with an ambitious creation that promises to leave a lasting impression.
This year’s theme is all about “Renaissances, From Nature to the Sacred”, and it conveys more than just the start of a globally acclaimed cultural event.
A lyrical journey into what it means to be human, to evolve, and to reconnect with the sacred awaits those who will attend.
This year’s opening act brings together dozens of musicians, dancers, narrators, and visual artists from across Africa and beyond.
At the heart of it all stands Fez’s Bab Makina, the monumental gateway that has become a canvas for the festival’s now signature projection mapping. As night falls, its ancient walls will light up with vivid visuals, wrapping audiences in a unique performance.
What will bind all performances together is the idea of Renaissance in all its splendor and depth, and not just as a historical period or artistic style, but as a living force.
Fez embodies that force. It once gave birth to Al Quaraouiyine, the oldest existing university, and for centuries shaped religious and intellectual life across Africa. Today, it continues to inspire, drawing a line from its multilayered legacy to the rebirths, spiritual, artistic, and cultural, that still define our age.
The show draws from its depth and diversity: from the hypnotic rhythm of Burundi’s drummers to the ritual dance of the Ivorian Leopards, from the poetic chants of Senegal’s Mouride brotherhood to the sacred feminine voices of Mayotte’s Deba tradition. Each performance speaks to a different expression of the sacred. Sometimes solemn, sometimes playful, always alive.
The stage will also welcome voices from beyond the continent. Omani Sufi chants will echo alongside the mystical Sama dance of Meknes. Corsican mezzo-soprano Battista Acquaviva will breathe new life into Renaissance hymns. Malian actor and storyteller Habib Dembelé will guide audiences through the evening as narrator, grounding the spectacle in the power of spoken word.
The result is a carefully crafted narrative, one that moves from elemental nature to spiritual awakening.
This opening night stands as a continuation of that effort and as an invitation. Fez does not just host a festival; it opens a space where cultures meet, where memory breathes, and where the soul finds room to rise.
The sacred music event will welcome the public on Friday, May 16. Doors open at 6:00 p.m., close at 7:15 p.m., and the show begins shortly after at 7:30 p.m.
At its core, the Fez Festival of Sacred Music has long acted as a living platform for South-South dialogue, and the organizers plan for this year’s edition to deepen that commitment.
The inclusion of spiritual traditions from Mayotte, Oman, Ivory Coast, Senegal, and Mali is no mere happenstance. It shows a deliberate effort to foreground connections between southern societies whose sacred practices often intersect and echo across borders.
