Sufism in Fez: Musicians teach the world to talk

By Adam Blenford - BBC News, Fez - Morocco
Wednesday, June 7, 2006

The Fez Festival of World Sacred Music is an ambitious attempt to combine musical excellence with debates about globalisation and international issues.

When Keyvan Chemirani was a young boy, he sat at home in France and listened to his father play music with the masters.

As the son of a great master of the zarb, an ancient Persian drum, he quickly developed a natural understanding of musical rhythm and form.

Two decades on Chemirani, now a world-renowned zarb master himself, is the driving force behind a cross-continental collaboration between his own family and musicians from India and Mali.

Performing at this year's Festival of World Sacred Music in Fez, Morocco, the words and sounds of Farsi, Tamil and Bambara, a west African language, won a standing ovation from an appreciative audience.

Chemirani, who has spent three years on the project, was clearly touched.
"For me this festival is about a very high level of art," he told the BBC.

Chemirani's 12-strong collective, also featuring Indian Tamil singer Sudha Ragunathan and Bambara vocalist Nahawa Doumbia of Mali, is united only by music, but on stage they sounded like a well-honed unit.
"There are some tensions, but there is also grace. We have become friends, and we respect each other, and we are proud."
"Every language has its own rhythm," Chemirani said. "Even if you don't understand the meanings, the rhythms and the sounds get into your mind and speak to you.
"If you really want to make a meeting between different traditions, you need more than just masters," Chemirani said, praising his collective.

"You need people who are willing to take off their crown, people who are willing to share."

Devotion and dervishes

Hours before Chemirani's ensemble took to the stage, Omar Sermini, the son of a Syrian sheikh, sang Islamic Sufi melodies under the shade of a centuries-old barbary oak tree in Fez's Batha gardens.

In Aleppo, the young Sermini learned to sing the Koran by heart before performing in front of the city's Sufi elders, the final stage of a Syrian singer's traditional training.
Watched by a mixed crowd of Muslims and western tourists, Sermini and an Aleppo muezzin, Hassan Haffar, wove a mystical spell of devotional songs and rhythms.

A dervish whirled away to the delight of both religious and secular, with Muslims among the crowd answering Sermini's Islamic incantations.

As he left the stage, the shy singer from Syria described why he came to sing in Fez, sounding as he did so not unlike the gregarious Benjamin Barber, the US academic who once advised President Bill Clinton.
"Fez and Aleppo are the same, they are cities of history and culture," Sermini said.

"For me Aleppo is the passage to heaven, and music is a universal language."