Fes Festival
The donkeys of Fes
Susan Orlean, writing magnificently about the medina in Fes (or Fez), Morocco: The medina in Fez may well be the largest urbanized area in the world impassable to cars and trucks, where anything that a human being can’t carry or push in a handcart is conveyed by a donkey, a horse or a mule. … If you have a heart
Remembering Robert
I am devastated to learn of the sudden death of my fellow music journalist Robert Hilferty. I met Robert last year during my stay in Fes, Morocco. (Photo gallery here.) Together with our colleague Derek Beres, we spent a good deal of time traipsing around the medina in the burning heat. The beautiful orange-leather wallet I brought home from that
Morocco reflections
Almost two years ago, a close friend enthusiastically recommended Paul Bowles’s 1955 novel The Spider’s House — set in Morocco during the struggle for independence from France — as a prescient commentary on Muslim attitudes toward the west (and vice versa), the quagmire in Iraq and so forth. Eager to read it on my recent return from Fes, I was
Tartit (3)
Had to put up just one more…
Aïssawa Sufi Brotherhood
At 11pm every night during the Fes Festival, Morocco’s Sufi Brotherhoods would perform in a courtyard at a cultural center called Dar Tazi. These concerts were open to the public, although the cops seemed to be on high riff-raff alert, so the scene at the door was something like a velvet rope. The shows ran the gamut, from hypnotic a
Tartit, from Timbuktu (2)
Another phenomenal moment with Tartit.
Tartit, from Timbuktu (1)
The most striking music I heard in Fes was by Tartit, a Tuareg (Tamasheq) ensemble from Mali. Two of the men played ngonis, which they tuned by adjusting tight leather straps with their thumbs. The women played hand drums; one of them would occasionally pour water on the cloth covering her instrument, resulting in a deeper tone. Her hands were
View pics
I woke up in my own bed yesterday to the sound of a Philly garbage truck, and in my haze, I thought the sanitation workers were shouting in Arabic. I’d been in Fes, Morocco for only a week, yet my consciousness was pretty well altered. I’ve finally got it together enough to provide photo-album links on Shutterfly, not only of