Music Festival in Essaouira Gnaoua

During the second week of June is an annual World Music Festival in Essaouira, which has become reference gnaoua and fusion music in the world.

Photography by www.13h37.com

Essaouira is a city located in the southern Atlantic coast of Morocco, about 300 km from Marrakech and has attracted countless sailors since ancient times. Its dramatic waves attract surfers from around the world, but its special climate and beautiful medina, Essaouira make a city that no visitor to Morocco should avoid, and enjoy your fish there, its beautiful streets, and if you plan ahead attend the World Music Festival.

Essaouira has the remains of prehistoric spots in the surrounding area, although it says that in the seventh century BC was founded by the Phoenicians and called Thamus. Portuguese navigators and sultans later Saadi take the city tried to use as a port of Timbuktu, where out products to be manufactured in Europe, such as gold, salt, sugar Haouz or black African slaves. These slaves explain the appearance of Gnaoua music in the region of Essaouira.

The city taken by the Portuguese in the sixteenth century became known as Mogador, but in the eighteenth century Sultan Mohammed Ben Abdellah called with its current name. Essaouira was listed by Unesco as a World Heritage Site since 2001. And they have passed through its streets figures such as Winston Churchill, Orson Wells, Sting and Jimmy Hendrix who wrote in one of his visits to the Moroccan city’s song Castles Made of Sand.

Festival music:

The music festival in Essaouira Gnaoua born in 1997, through the impetus of the riads in Essaouira, hotels and restaurants has grown dramatically to become a reference music festival that attracts thousands of people worldwide. Gnaoua music (or gnawa) comes from black African slaves who intermarried with the inhabitants of Morocco and the Berbers. Gnaoua is music for the mind and body where intense mixing African music and Islam.

During the festival performances, a teacher Gnaoua invited to a jazz musician, pop, reggae or rock, and play a «jam session» where merge their music making the meeting a real interesting improvisation. Among other artists, have touched the Wailers, Pat Metheny, Youssou N’Dour, Asian Dub Foundation and the jazz pianist Randy Weston.

It is music that will surprise you!