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The Mawazine Festival
Morocco Celebrates World Culture
Rabat
23/05/2002 -
Arts and music festivals are a relatively new addition to Morocco's cultural calendar. Visitors are familiar with the Fes music festival (now in its eighth year) and the festival of Essaouira (launched in 1998). Indeed, both events have now gained international recognition, putting both cities high on the must-visit tourist list (after Marrakech, of course!) However, the Moroccan capital, Rabat, has had a distinctly low cultural profile to date, with no major arts event to attract passing tourists. According to Abdejalil Lahjomri, director of the Mawâzine festival and chairman of "Maroc Cultures", "Up until now the Moroccan capital has had no cultural stamp (…) Rabat has not had one single major cultural event to put it on the national and international map. It was evident that the city needed to follow the examples of Fes, Marrakech and Essaouira and organise an annual event that would become its cultural 'signature'.".
Tourists have long neglected the charms of Rabat, preferring to visit Morocco's three other imperial cities instead. Indeed, up until now it has been rare for visitors to actually spend a night in the Moroccan capital. This gives the city an added charm given that its old medina neighbourhood has not been invaded by souvenir shops and tourist boutiques. Things look set to change now, however, with the first edition of "Mawâzine", an ambitious project that took just nine months and a budget of 7 million dirhams to organise.
Steelband, Diablada, Dama and Bamoums
Rabat came to life on Saturday afternoon with the Ebony Steelband from the UK kicking off the festivities at 5pm. The band's loud, colourful performance attracted a timid audience of locals who lined the city streets to watch a multi-cultural carnival parade. Children looked on in open-mouthed astonishment as Diablada d’Oruro, a 70-strong group from a mining town in Bolivia, marched past with giant painted masks, many of which were almost a metre wide. Decorated with horns, trunks and enormous eyes (made of recycled car headlights), the impressive insect troupe paraded by to the sound of a local brass banda. The Diablada d'Ouro may have been a million miles from assuring their traditional role of exorcising evil spirits from Bolivia's tin and silver mines, but their performance seemed to delight the Rabat crowd nevertheless.
Next up in the parade were the Dama des Dogons from Mali, who paraded through the city streets wearing brightly-painted animal masks representing antelopes, buffaloes and wader birds. Meanwhile, the Bamoums from the royal ensemble of Foumban brought up the rear, bearing the colours of Cameroon. This joyous cacophony of music and visual delights was added to by a local water-seller, wandering through the crowd ringing a little bell and throwing his red hat into the air in triple somersaults.
Oumou Sangaré, Danyel Waro and others
The first "Mawâzine" festival boasted an all-star musical line-up too, featuring concerts by a host of big-name stars including Oumou Sangaré, Youssou N’Dour, Susana Baca, Africando, Danyel Waro, Toto la Monposina, Cesaria Evora, Celia Cruz, Mory Kante, Nazaré Pereira and Le Super Rail Band from Bamako. What's more, many of these artists – such as Oumou Sangaré – were performing in Morocco for the very first time. The beautiful Malian diva took to the stage at the Mohammed V theatre, giving a moving performance that proved she was as politically and socially committed as ever. Continuing her fight against polygamy and her struggle for women's liberation in Africa, Oumou powered out her message against a background of native Wassoulou rhythms, delighting her fanclub in the front rows. The rest of the (largely local) audience seemed to appreciate the Malian singer's performance, but were altogether less demonstrative in expressing their joy.
Meanwhile, Africando kicked off proceedings on the main stage outside the theatre. Tenors Medoune Diallo, Gnonnas Pedro, Ronal Baro and Mamadou Traoré "Balaké", accompanied by seven musicians and conductor Miguel Lopez, put on a stunning sound-and-light extravaganza – which seemed a little excessive given the relatively small audience who turned out for the show! But there was no denying that Africando managed to whip up a real ambience with Medoune shouting "Long live the king!" at the end of each song.
Festivities were also organised in the heart of the medina, three traditional old dar houses hosting concerts by a mariachi quartet from Anahuac (Mexico), Inzouddine Ben Saïd Massondi and his musicians from the island of Anjouan (Comoros), Suzana Blasko (Argentina) and the fabulous Lucy Acedevo and her musica negra from Peru.
Although the first evening of the festival attracted a relatively small audience, word soon spread on the Rabat grapevine and locals turned out in force on the following nights. Assembling a festival panoply of iceboxes and fold-out chairs, groups of family and friends got together to pour over the programme and organise their evening. For it has to be said, given the wide variety of concerts, dance performances and films on offer – and the fact that the three main stages were unfortunately rather far apart – it was impossible to pack everything into one evening!
The undisputed star of "Mawâzine" on Sunday night turned out to be Senegalese star Youssou N’Dour. Local security guards were beginning to show the strains of supervising the crowd – but the king of m'balax's smoothly-oiled performance went on for two hours without the slightest problem. And by the time Youssou's gorgeous dancers launched into a display of their traditional "ventilateur" (a dance which involves an impressive amount of bum-wiggling!) even the hard-nosed security men managed to crack a smile. Later on Reunionese star Danyel Waro broke the audience's polite reserve and got everyone up on their feet dancing to his rhythmic maloya. Meanwhile, Colombian diva Toto la Momposina brought the house down with a vibrant performance, earning a fervent encore from the crowd.
As we took our leave on Monday night, just before concerts by Susana Baca et Mory Kante, we could see that the first "Mawâzine" festival had proved a resounding success. By the end of its six-day run - thanks to its all-star line-up and the fact that all concerts were free to the public! -locals appeared to have thrown off all inhibitions and got into the festival spirit. In short, Rabat is now well and truly on the musical map - so book your plane ticket now for next year's festivities!
Frédérique Hall
Photos: Pierre-Emmanuel Rastoin
