Some events make all the beauty of a trip to Morocco, sometimes all you need is to take a little detour to share some lovely traditional celebrations.
Here are some of the great moments we would like to share with you:
It is traditionally held on the second weekend of May. Men and women dress in their best attire and join in celebration and dance. The inhabitants of the Kelaa M’Gouna spray visitors with rosewater and toss rose petals at them that drop on their clothes. The evenings take place in the numerous rose gardens where everyone joins to dance and elect Miss Roses. A young single woman will be queen for a day. She parades on a decorated and perfumed chariot, the eager spectators cheer her and rose petals cover the ground where she passes. The folkloric dances such as the Ahidous, the sabre dance and the bee dance liven up the nights during these celebrations.
Every year in the month of June, Marrakech vibrates to the rhythm of the Folk Festival that takes place in the imperial Palace El Badi. This sumptuous palace with its enormous courtyard is covered with carpets and traditional multicolored decorations, and is ready to host the musicians, singers, dancers from the art world of Morocco’s popular tradition; the numerous public coming from all over Morocco to savor these great moments is also an interesting sight. There is a mix that unites the ritual dances of the Atlas with those coming from the Sahara like the Dekkah and the Guedra or again the ritual dances of the Gnawa, mystical ceremonies descending from the animist cults of Sub-Saharan Africa.
This event gathers the best Gnawa music groups, as well as several American and European Jazz bands. This show, born in 1960, was such a revelation that it immediately became one of the world’s first rate shows.
http://www.festival-gnaoua.net/
Fes, Spiritual Capital of the country, gathers each year a convergence of world cultures that are in close contact without knowing it. Born to foster globalization, this event, started in 1994, has already gained
international fame.
http://www.fesfestival.com
To match the ambitions of the Euro-Mediterranean partnership, proposed during the Barcelona conference in 1995, this event will take place next year, and will impose itself as an important place, to meet, exchange and express ideas on the development of what today we call European Jazz, while allowing to open the scene to Moroccan jazzmen whose syncopated music is deeply anchored in the millenary traditions of North Africa.
This solemn event allows, aside from the substantial economic and touristic impact, to create a platform of meetings, exchanges and dialogue, as well as to foster cooperation among the developers and lovers of the 7th art. The festival is only at its second edition in this year 2002, from now on, it will be organized by the International Film Festival Foundation of Marrakech and chaired by His Royal Highness Prince Moulay Rachid.
http://www.festivalmarrakech.info/
This agricultural Moussem is organized to promote the rural and agricultural world, highlighting the development projects of almond trees, olive trees and fig trees and forest essences in the region as well as the almond tree species grown in the Aknoul region. The event is followed by the parade of Miss Almonds, an endless procession of flowered floats, a multitude of folk troupes, a parade of horsemen with harnessed horses. The event is often marked, aside from the artistic performances, by seminary debates on the cultural techniques of the almond tree.
