Berkley Center

Music is a well known path for crossing wide cultural divides. Music speaks without words. It can epitomize a mood as well as a culture. And it can stir up emotions and preconceptions. There's a fascinating venture afoot in Fes, Morocco, to use those very qualities to bridge divides between the Muslim world and western cultures and faiths. The idea is that people can, through their love of music, explore new realms and appreciate the world's wonderful diversity. But even more, the hope is that with emotions roused through music and art, people will open their minds as well as their hearts to new ideas.

The Festival of Sufi Culture is an eight-day event, now in its second year, that combines musical performances with poetry recitations, discussions on global challenges, and workshops on topics as diverse as music therapy and calligraphy.

The music is fabulous and extraordinary in its range. At one extreme, the “classic” Sufi cultures (and there are at least 1,000 different groups in Morocco alone) are presented with Samaa groups. (Samaa, an Arabic word whose exact translation was hotly debated, essentially means hearing, and suggests hearing not with the ear but with the soul.) The Samaa groups shuffle on stage in groups of up to 30 and slowly start the music. Their songs are about God and love. The rhythms are powerful and repetitive and the tempo steadily mounts until both singers and audience are in a trance, heads and upper bodies swaying back and forth.

At another extreme is Abd el Malik, a hiphop star rapidly rising in popularity across Europe. One of his hit songs, "Soldier of Lead," gives a glimpse of his story: I was 12 years old, pockets full of money, already seen too much blood. His family is from Congo (Brazzaville), he grew up in a tough neighborhood in Strasbourg, France. His core followers are the disaffected young people in the outskirts of French cities. His path through delinquency, violence, and borderline extremism was interrupted by his discovery of Sufi traditions in Fes. Sufi rap? It works. His music blasts out his messages that faith and politics must stay apart, that love is supreme.

Then there is Said Hassan Hafid Idriss, praise singer from Upper Egypt. Tall, with a large girth, unseeing eyes behind dark glasses, he depends on others to move from place to place. At the least encouragement, he belts out a song, his mouth wide, his voice penetrating far and near and his listeners joining in. A Moroccan businessman, Mohammed Benis, says he discovered him in a small Upper Egyptian community, singing praise songs, the long revered tradition of Madia. Now he is an international sensation.

And the Rabi’a Ensemble sings the same words but with a totally different flavor. This group is made up of French women, proud of their multicultural and ethnic composition.

These musical performances (up to six concerts a day) stand in sharp contrast to serious three-hour discussions each morning where the audience is almost as large. The topics this year included economics and spirituality, Sufism and care of the earth, and traditions of chivalry in Andalusia. During a discussion of women and Islam, a poet, a businessman, a social activist, and an international civil servant all said forcefully that current discrimination against women in the Muslim world is a product of history and culture, not of the core tenets of the faith. However, they left hanging the question of what to do about it. At the business panel, Kamil Benjelloun wore his commercial success lightly, arguing that Sufi values should infuse 21st century business culture.

The Sufi Festival’s creator and director, and its heart and soul, is Faouzi Skali, Moroccan anthropologist and social entrepreneur who created the Fes Festival of Global Sacred Music 14 years ago. Sufi culture, he says, represents a vast and little explored “spiritual continent”, rich and diverse in its heritage and deeply intertwined in daily life in large parts of the Muslim world. Its values include, he says, an openness to different cultures, an obligation to share and serve, deep love of knowledge, and a joy in beauty. Love is at the core of Sufi traditions: an Ibn Arabi poem sung at the Festival by Aicha Redouane, a Moroccan Berber living in France, says: “Love is my religion and my faith” – echoing the ancient desert wisdom that love of God must guide the caravans as they cross the deserts.

This effusion of love, spirituality, and beauty is a far cry from Morocco’s desperate young men who cling to the bottom of trucks in hopes of reaching Europe and a job, or those who end up in Iraq in terror cells. The contrast was barely discussed but it was a constant undercurrent during the Festival. A partial answer to the question was suggested in comments about the high stakes in the ongoing, live struggles within Islam between its disaffected, absolute tendencies and its potential for peace and learning are a constant undercurrent. The diversity of ideas and cultures at Fes are seen as either a partial answer and as a vision of what could emerge if the better angels can prevail.

Faouzi Skali remarked that the exploration of the “spiritual continent” of Sufi cultures is really just beginning. It has thousands of faces and languages of its own. It is a part of the vast world of Islam that is so poorly understood in much of the world. And it has immense potential for good. Let the exploration continue!