Sentient Times Oct/Nov 06

In Tune with the Sacred

By Raina Hassan Sanderson

Female musicians are emerging as leaders for peace at the
Annual Fes Festival of World Sacred Music.

In one of the most intriguing and historically rich cities in the world, women musicians from all over the globe gather each June to bring spiritually minded music lovers together for nine days of musical offerings and edifying colloquia. The annual Fes Festival of World Sacred Music is now in its twelfth year. Recognized by the United Nations as one of the major events contributing to dialogue between people around the world, the festival was founded in 1994 as a response to the first Gulf War. With increasing attendance every year since its inception, the festival was this year’s recipient of the Ousseimi Foundation Prize for Tolerance, following Nelson Mandela, who was awarded the prize in 2004.

Widely considered to be the spiritual and intellectual center of Morocco, the historic city of Fes serves as the ideal home for the festival. Seven stunning locations comprise the festival’s venues, two of which—the Batha Museum and Bab Al Makina—serve as idyllic backdrops for sacred offerings. Originally a palace built by Moulay Al Hassan in the mid-nineteenth century, the Batha Museum was transformed in 1915 into a museum dedicated to the arts and traditions of Fes. Now considered a historical monument, its patio, graced by a giant Barbary oak several hundred years old, offers a serene setting for the festival’s afternoon concerts. Home to the festival’s evening concerts, the massive gate of Bab Al Makina offers guests a grand welcome into two palatial squares of the Royal Palace. It is here that attendees enjoy open-air evenings of music under the stars.

Female performers at the festival represent a growing, global movement of women peace activists, spiritual leaders, and artists. This year, a special afternoon concert, “Mystical Songs of the Women of the Maghreb,” brought three peace leaders and musicians together for a soulful, stirring performance. Tunisian musician Leila Hejaiej, Moroccan musician Karima Skalli, and Algerian musician Nacéra Chabane (known as Nassima) shared the stage. “Our music is about humanity, divine love, tolerance, and acceptance of one another’s differences, which is really the aim of this festival,” Leila says. Each of the women has traveled around the world to share her music and carry a message of peace and tolerance. Collectively, they have toured Asia, the Americas, throughout the Arab world and Africa, and Europe. “When I travel,” Karima says, “I take the Moroccan culture with me and teach people about my country.” Acting as an ambassador, she educates her audiences about the women of her culture and the rich spirituality that imbues all they do. “Spirituality is part of the culture—when women hold their babies, when they work in the field, spirituality is there. Women transmit the values of peace to their children.” Much of Nassima’s work has focused on showing the loving, tolerant face of Islam to combat stereotypes. This was the impetus behind her latest CD, “Voie Sufi, Voix d’Amour” (Sufi Spirit, the Voice of Love). Though the women spend a great deal of time performing abroad, they are active peacemakers in their home countries. Through children’s education and benefit concerts for peace organizations, they are dedicated to transmitting a message of “love, peace, and tolerance.”

“The voice of Tibet” Yungchen Lhamo also performed at this year’s festival. Born in a labor camp in Chinese-occupied Tibet, Yungchen secretly learned devotional singing—one of the many banned customs—from her grandmother. Fleeing Tibet on foot in 1989, Yungchen has now performed in over 70 countries worldwide since crossing the Himalayas as a young woman. “When I left my home in Tibet,” she addressed the audience, “I left everything behind. The one thing I took with me was my voice. And that is my gift to you.” And what a sacred gift it was. Her otherworldly vocals served as a kind of portal, sweeping her rapt audience to another dimension. Pausing and slowly opening her eyes after a particularly moving song, she commented, “I’m sorry. I went somewhere else.” Among the astounded and delighted murmurs, one audience member responded, “I went with her.”

Yungchen has served as a mouthpiece for her oppressed people and performs in support of Tibet House New York, The Milarepa Fund, Students For a Free Tibet, Tibet Relief Fund, and many others.

Female spiritual leaders and peacemakers were not just on stage at the festival—there were many in the audience, as well. Sangeeta Isvaran, a dancer, teacher, and peace activist, attended this year’s festival. Originally from Madras, India, Sangeeta has devoted her life to practicing and teaching the healing art of dance. Working primarily with AIDS patients, sex workers, refugees, and those who have suffered from communal violence in Indonesia, France, and India, Sangeeta uses sacred dance as a form of communication and therapy for these groups. “I work to use tradition in a modern context,” she says. “For example, I use sacred dance to talk about AIDS. When you give it a sacred context, it gets people to talk about it because you have purified the issue, or legitimized the issue, and given them a space where it is okay to talk about sex and about AIDS because it is in the context of sacred, of dance, of art, that they’re comfortable with.”

Sangeeta believes dance that expresses love and emotion helps people who have been traumatized, “because there is a sense of isolation, and this dance helps bridge the gap between people by bringing them back into touch, into contact with one another,” she says. “I believe since birth we are all searching for this one moment of unification, of universal well-being. We’re all searching for it in everything we do, I truly believe this.”

She remains in contact with some of the children she has worked with in Cambodia and returns to the country to work with them twice a year. Dancing with them has, Sangeeta says, “helped them create a community that is stronger. The poverty and prostitution are still there, but they [the people] are stronger I hope.”

At the festival’s closing evening concert, Sangeeta and others could be seen dancing and singing under the Moroccan night sky. Here, what these leaders, teachers, and artists for peace brought to this gathering was evident. As people from all over the globe linked their voices and arms in song and movement, they added their own sacred song to the global peace movement—and honored the sacred art of music as their conduit.

For more information on the Fes Festival of World Sacred Music, visit www.imagine-adventures.com or www.fesfestival.com. Raina Hassan Sanderson is an editor and writer living in Portland, Oregon. Photos on this page were taken by Rory Noice Finney who will be presenting a show of photographs titled Morocco: Behind the Seen Thurs, Oct. 12, 6-10pm at Nuwandart, 258 A Street, Ashland, Oregon. Call Rory (541) 621-4421 or Nuwandart (541) 488-4278 for information.