Essaouira Gnaoua Festival: A popular and audacious program
For its 25th edition from June 27 to 29, the Essaouira Gnaoua and World Music Festival is pulling out all the stops with an original, popular, and audacious program. With some 53 concerts planned and over 400 artists on stage, the festival from June 27 to 29, 2024 is an invitation to cross-fertilization, inclusion and living together. One of those musical, sensory, and intellectual experiences that only this singular festival can imagine, with a perfect balance between Gnaoua Maalems and world musicians.
Over the past quarter-century, the festival has seen some of the biggest names in jazz and world music perform alongside the Maâlems Gnaoua. This year is no exception. Buika (Spain), Saint Levant (Palestine), The Brecker Brothers Band Reunion (USA), Labess (France, Algeria) and Bokanté (USA, Guadeloupe), are just some of the headliners who will be ringing out the notes of flamenco, blues, jazz, oriental music, rap, gypsy rumba, and chaabi music. The emotion that springs from Buika’s husky, powerful voice makes her one of the most distinctive and celebrated Spanish artists in the world. An incredibly expressive voice, which blends the soul of flamenco with the depth of jazz, transcends linguistic barriers and blurs musical boundaries.
A rising star on the international music scene, the Palestinian rapper of plural origins and multi-generational appeal Saint Levant brilliantly blends the Arabic, English, and French languages in his tracks. Highly politically engaged, his tracks, which fuse hip hop and orientalist RnB, are a hit on platforms and rack up millions of views on social media. By programming Randy Brecker and his band (The Brecker Brothers Band Réunion), the Festival welcomes one of the greatest names in jazz of the last 50 years, who, along with his brother Michael Brecker, has conquered stages the world over and exerted a lasting influence on generations of musicians. Labess’s warm, festive music is rooted in Algerian chaabi music, which he fuses with flamenco and rumba, promoting messages of peace and unity. Renowned for their high-energy live shows, Labess’ music is a blend of musical styles, free, and haunted.
A supergroup of instrumentalists from diverse backgrounds, Bokanté bears the stamp of Michael League, one of the great jazz bassists of his generation and founder of Snarky Puppy. The band’s main asset is its singer Malika Tirolien, who masters the vocal demands of jazz to perfection, delivering lyrics in Creole, French and English that resonate with the struggles facing the world today. Finally, the powerful «Aita mon amour» duo, made up of Moroccan singer Widad Mjama and Tunisian musician Khalil Epi, brilliantly revisits traditional Moroccan Aita, projecting it into the modern world, is likely to be a real hit.
A.Bo
