Thursday, April 28, 2011

April Holiday: Morocco: Fes (Sufi concert)

That night, we headed over to the Batha Museum, where the first concert of the Sufi Mysticism Festival would be performed.  It took us a while to decide (that or a great dinner?) but we eventually ran towards the concert and found ourselves seats in the courtyard.
The Batha Museum is a beautiful place to hold a concert.  We sat in the courtyard, and the musicians played beneath a huge oak tree in the garden, but it wasn't just the setting that was magical.  The music was like nothing I'd ever heard before - spiritual and haunting.  Everyone in the audience seemed to know the words to some of the songs, and it sent shivers down my spine to be surrounded by voices like that.  They played two sets - the first by a group of Andalusian musicians, and the second by a Moroccan singer and her band.  The music changed time signatures and used notes I hadn't known existed; it almost shimmered in the air.  I have never been to a concert as moving as that one, and I probably never will again, but it was wonderful to sit in the courtyard under a tree that had to be older than a thousand years, and to hear music that seemed to exist outside the dimensions that I knew.
Have you ever heard Sufi music?  What did you think?

1 comment:

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