A hundred musicians. The art of sharing and the pleasure of coming together. Edition dedicated to Youth and Transmission.
A bold edition, perhaps iconoclastic some would say, Essaouira, insatiable agora of all music, has chosen this year to place its Atlantic Andalusias festival under the sign of youth and transmission.
Indeed and for the first time in the cozy world of Andalusian music, these are the “Young People
Grand Masters” of this prestigious school who will be at the heart and under the spotlights of this 13th edition which will be unlike any other. Coming from Tangier, Tetouan, Fez, Chefchaouen, Salé and Essaouira. There will be more than a hundred of them on the El Menzeh stage to tell us in their own way, and with the ardor of their youth, the promises of their talent which did not wait for the weight of the years to impose itself on the most demanding music lovers.
This mirror of transmission which marks this edition will reveal another facet of “Andalusias”
by giving this year another privileged place to the exceptional convergence of cultures
Muslim and Jewish when Andalusian music and history bring them together to sing, play and dance together.
This celebration of otherness and diversity will also have the face and voice of the great diva Sanaa Marahati
who chose to reappropriate the repertoire of Samy El Maghribi to better share it with us than he
either Andalusian, liturgical, gharnati, chaabi or hawzi.
In the same vein and going back the clock of time, Raymonde El Bidaouia, another icon
emblematic of the most popular, warmest and most popular Moroccan musical tradition
moving which will return to the souirie scene to sink into its teeth, with greed and without restraint, these slices of life which have found their home base in Essaouira.
These side roads which leave from Seville, Oran and elsewhere, other musicians and singers have chosen to take them to join us in Essaouira and tell us this beautiful story. Rachid Ouchehad and his Souiri group have thus chosen to pay a fraternal and complicit tribute to Maurice El Medioni, a formidable musician, singer and composer who from Oran has written and performed the most beautiful pieces of the Judeo-Arab musical heritage of the 20th century.
We will have understood, this 2016 vintage from our Andalousies Atlantiques in Essaouira will be a landmark in its inexhaustibility
ability to say no to amnesiacs and open arms wide to those more and more each year who say yes to this celebration of rediscovered memory and the joy of being together.
The spirit of continuity in diversity and recognition of Moroccan Judeo-Muslim heritage will continue to animate the Andalusia Festival. A unique cultural festival of its kind which has grabbed a great place among the festivals organized in Morocco, even in the Maghreb. Essaouira has the honor of being part of this very specific cultural dynamic with well-thought-out choices, without forgetting for the greatest pleasure of nostalgic fans, the great representatives of Andalusian music, in front of an informed and knowledgeable public.
