National Geographic Music (National Geographic)

Gates and doorways are a repeating architectural motif in the Moroccan city of Fes, serving as emblems that connect the old, medieval medina and its new offshoots, the busy hustle of the souks (markets) and the serene interior gardens of its riads (former grand homes-now turned into bed and breakfasts). Passing through the many doors and gateways of Fes, visitors transverse the city's many distinct but interconnected worlds. Fes' annual Sacred Music Festival, which just celebrated its 15th anniversary in early June, also echoes this sense of interconnectedness, with many of its concerts held in the former Imperial city's various monumental gates - and many of its performances opening doors into divergent musical worlds.

The flagship concerts of the festival take place in the open air at the imposing Bab al-Makina gate. In the 19th century, the square in front of the grand, keyhole-arched gate to the royal palace served as the mechour, or assembly point for the King's household cavalry during royal ceremonies. Today the massive gate, backlit stone walls and flanking turrets serve as the arena for evening concerts of "sacred" music in the most generous understanding of the term. Located a few minutes walk from Bab Al-Makina, is the Bab Boujloud gate, decked with blue and green tiles and keyhole shaped arches dating back to the11th century. Its public square hosts free concerts for Fassis that showcase popular music and engage the local public. In this setting, each presentation of a musical tradition is also a gateway to the other: Muslim to Jewish, Jewish to Christian, devotional to secular.

Cultural juxtapositions play out everywhere, as in the concert of the Swiss ensemble Elyma, which specializes in Monteverdi and late Italian Renaissance music. The ensemble performed on a stage constructed under the sheltering canopy of an ancient oak tree at the Batha museum - an Andalusian garden set inside a medieval palace where the festival's afternoon concerts take place. Just as the ensemble's conductor raised his baton to indicate the beginning of the final piece of the program, he was interrupted by the five o'clock muezzin's call to prayer at the nearby mosque. Forced to wait through the lengthy prayer, the conductor resumed the concert's finale only after the early evening prayer had subsided. The collision of solemn, sacred concert programming and devotional rituals of daily life brought laughter from the audience.

Also performing at the Batha museum, The Yuval Ron Ensemble features a multi-ethnic membership united by a mission to draw together the threads connecting music and dance traditions across the diverse ethnicities, faiths and traditions of the Middle East. Their performance breathed new life into Ladino folk songs, Andalusian melodies, classical Arabic songs, and Jewish prayers. Musically, compound textures were created as the harmonium or the Armenian duduk were added to the typical roundup of oud, qanun, ney, and percussion, while the ensemble's two singers, a Palestinian trained in classical Arabic music and a Moroccan-Israeli who grew up singing rootsy folklore in family gatherings, traded lead vocals. When the band left its instruments to walk towards the crowd singing a final prayer a cappella, the crowd joined them on its feet, clapping and mouthing the words.

Do such aesthetic collaborations foster tolerance and peace? "I'm not an idealist. I'm a realist. And this, what we do here, is real," said Gerard Kurdjian, who since the Sacred Music Festival's inception has been its artistic director. "We opened the doors to those kinds of religions not considered as such in terms of Islamic dogma, adding more traditions and cultural areas, from strictly monotheistic to Hinduism, Buddhism and Animism. This was very important because it's not easy in the Muslim world." More recently, the festival began to commission interfaith and intercultural musical projects. Among others, this year's commissions included Syrian composer-director and singer Abed Azrie's Arabic oratorio "The Gospel According to John," an ambitious project that combined a youth orchestra from South of France dedicated to musics of the Mediterranean, a choir and soloists from the Music Institute of Damascus whose apparent youth belied their soulful, accomplished delivery, and musicians from Morocco's Royal Guard Conservatory. "In the future I would love this dynamic process to increase, in order to have a living festival, not a sort of museum for the ancient traditions of the world," said Kurdjian. "People are waiting for good things which nurture the heart. If you let them live they don't care so much about religion and order. Sacredness is freedom."

This message was encapsulated by the festival's inclusion of world music artists as Souad Massi (pictured), an Algerian singer currently based in France whose soulful voice and humanistic messages turned her into a cultural ambassador for the youth of her war-torn country. For her first appearance in Morocco, Massi delivered two concerts, each emphasizing different aspects of her musical palette that includes folk, rock, Andalusian music, chaabi (roots-pop of North Africa) and Portuguese fado inflections. At Bab al-Makina she delivered a restrained acoustic set, backed by oud, percussion, and guitar that showcased her voice to a buttoned-up audience. But at the free Bab Boujloud concert, with the addition of electric bass, guitar, and a multi-generational crowd that knew her songs and cheered enthusiastically, she rocked. It's hard to say whose enthusiasm was greatest - the jean-clad youth leaning against the rails trying to get as close as possible, the gray-haired man in the blue djellaba who stood erect, smiling and clapping along, or Souad's. "When people know my songs and my language, and can sing with me, I'm very happy," she said, adding however, that she liked both formats. "When I lived in Algeria, I didn't listen to Arabic music. But when I left Algeria, I had nostalgia for the sound of al-oud, for Arabic language, things oriental. And because of that I came closer to my music, language and tradition? I'm happy to be doing both."

Like the city and its gateways, the Sacred Music Festival also contains worlds within worlds. One is the concurrent Fest de la Ville (Festival in the City), offering free concerts at the medina's Bab Boujloud and at the open square of Aït Skato of the Ville Nouvelle, which showcased an impressive lineup of Moroccan youth music, including the conscientious hip-hop group H-Kayne, the rock group Haoussa, and singer Nabyla Maan, whose pop a-la-Andalusia was homegrown in Fes. Another world is that of the Sufi brotherhoods, programmed late nightly at the garden of Dar Tazi, a former governmental palace, and sometimes repeated as part of the Batha museum afternoon recitals.

Morocco has long been one of the most important crucibles of Islamic mysticism, but the Sufi brotherhoods performing at the festival extend far beyond North Africa. Most impressive was the Razbar ensemble of the Ahl-Al-Haqq order, originating in Kurdish Iran and currently based in Germany, unusual for its co-ed membership. The ensemble featured the kamanche fiddle, the ney flute, and the dozal clarinet, but it was the intricate patterning on the tanbour drum along with the intensely passionate and impeccably synchronous praise songs to Allah, that built up cyclical waves of tension and release and communicated the message to both God and audience. Also impressive was a choreographed percussion interlude performed on four frame-drums with acrobatic virtuosity.

The festival's closing show at the Bab-Al Makina featured the Symmetric Orchestra, a pan-Manding coalition of virtuosos headed by the Malian kora player Toumani Diabate, was pure expenditure of joyous energy. At one point, after a lengthy exchange of solos between the singers and musicians onstage, one of the griot-singers kneeled next to Toumani, egging him on. Toumani went into a breathtaking solo for which he used only two out of his instrument's 21 strings, but which was rhythmically and melodically so intricate it sounded like a cascading string ensemble. The concert climaxed as at the end of the set three of Fes' Sufi brotherhoods entered from the back of the amphitheater in procession, singing, drumming and blowing their trumpets. Stringing their way through the crowd and unto the stage, they kept singing Allah's praises. Once settled onstage, the Symmetric Orchestra joined them. A large full moon hung above, centered perfectly above the Bab al-Makina stage.