Fez Festival of World Sacred Music
annual music festival
The Fez Festival of World Sacred Music (Festival des Musiques Sacrées du Monde) is an annual music festival that is held for a week in Fez, Morocco. It was first held in 1994 and usually held over 10 days in early June. The festival includes concerts, debates, and joint performances of Muslim and Christian devotional music from artists from all over the world.
According to Fawzi Sakkali, the former president of the festival, the goal of the event is to highlight Islam's multifaceted nature as a civilization encompassing philosophy, art, urbanism, architecture, and humanism. Furthermore, the festival seeks to foster dialogue between Western and North African scholars, artists, and writers on diverse topics related to the intersection of spirituality, society, and artistic expression and to promote better understanding between cultures and faiths through exposure to sacred music.
History
The Fez Festival of World Sacred Music was established in 1994 by Faouzi Skali, a philanthropist and the president of the Spirit of Fez Foundation, with the goal of promoting unity among individuals of all races and religions through spiritual and humanitarian values, inspired by Andalusian principles. Skali believed that music, being a universal language, has the power to communicate with people from all walks of life.
The festival was canceled in 2020 and 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
In 2022, allegations arose against the festival organizers for allegedly barring the participation Tibetan musician Loten Namling following purported influence from the Chinese government. Namling, an activist and political refugee who resides in Switzerland, initially received an invitation to perform at the festival's opening event but subsequently received notice that his invitation had been revoked.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 30, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3070139. Authority coordinates are 34.061, -4.980. 2 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1994, 2020, 2021 and 2022.
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This entry incorporates text from “Fez Festival of World Sacred Music” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.