Essaouira Festival
Gnaoua Festival of Essaouira - Morocco21-24 June 2012
The festival of Essaouira, 15th edition. Essaouria is a small town surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, 180 km from Marrakech.
The natural beauty that distinguish it are the deep blue sea and the long golden beach where the strong ocean winds blow incessantly.
Every year the streets of Essaouria become the scene of one of the most important music festivals in the world, the International Music Festival Gnaoua, now in its fifteenth edition.
In a few years this event has become the response of the Morocco Woodstock concerts, thanks to the fact that in the sixties artists such as Jimi Hendrix, Frank Zappa, Bob Marley and Sting were hosted by the numerous hippy community who settled in this city.
The Gnaoua music is a music that mixes elements of ethnic African and Arab-Berbers, using traditional instruments like drums and cymbals to 3 strings. It follows from the practices of the ancient original black African slaves, whose music were both therapeutic and hypnotic.
For 3 days the city is enriched with colors, lights and tribal sounds that attract thousands of spectators from all over Africa and also part of Mediterranean Europe.
