Fes, Maroc, Medina, 250a / May, 1998

Alarm clock rings out through any of a dozen seemingly random window/holes in a slightly askew, once-whitewashed mortar wall. "Must be the wakeup call for the imam," I say to Steve, my friend and recording engineer. It's a strong pace we've set for ourselves on this random late-night trek through the thousand-year-old Fes medina. We're determined to make it to the Boujloud Gate before the first muezzin of the day starts around 3:07.

The warm and weird house of Sheikh Hadji Corleone is behind us, but the Issawa Sufi "ritual" he just hosted there reverberates in our ears: drumming and singing, raven-haired Moroccan women in trance, the rhaitas (oh, the rhaitas!), ascetics chanting amid a cloud of incense, kif, tobacco, hashish. Sophisticated N.Y. journalists take in the scene with stunned awe. They think, "We're not at S.O.B.'s anymore."

Oh, yeah, and Björk was there.

These are just some of the extracurricular activities available to you while attending the Fes Festival of World Sacred Music. This annual, week-long celebration of the sacred in film, art, and--above all--music takes place the last week of May. Two concerts a day: one in the late afternoon at Dar Batha, a converted royal mansion with a huge, beautiful, ancient garden in its expansive courtyard. Hundreds of birds accompany the musicians, as if all these groups from around the world have come here simply to sit in with the tweeting, chirping house band. In this North African garden of delight, festival goers are treated to sounds from Ireland's Anuna, a Greek Byzantine choir, Begum Parveen Sultana with Ustad Dilshad Khan, and Wacana Budaya Gamelan, from Java by way of Germany.

Nighttime performances are sited at Bab Maqina, a partially refurbished outer courtyard to the royal palace. With a 30-foot arch as backdrop, Monajat Yulcheva opens the Festival emoting Uzbekh Sufi songs in a plaintive purr, while Barbara Hendricks' slightly-out-of-place but nevertheless gorgeously soaring operatic voice brings down the house--in a driving rainstorm, no less (El Niño strikes Morocco!). Morocco's Albert Bouhadanna sings Sefardic songs backed by the Arabo-Andalusian song stylings of the Mohammed Briouel Orchestra. Highlights: Alim Kassimov of Azerbaijan (ecstatic vocals of the highest order) and the Festival closers, the Whirling Dervishes of Konya (truly a sight to behold; very easy on the eyes).

The Fes Festival showcases a fairly diverse roster of the world's sacred music practitioners (though the focus is most definitely on Islam, Judaism, and Christianity, and the various offshoots from each--Sufism in particular), providing an opportunity to see many artists that rarely if ever make it to North America, or even outside their own countries.

For me, it's been three straight years attending and recording the Fes Festival. I consider myself a fan and a friend of the Festival, despite its imperfections. (Not all of the music excites me. The largely European and upper-class Moroccan audience feels a bit stiff sometimes) Maybe I'm jaded, but for me the event has become an excuse to come to this magnificent city. For me, the joy is being a Fassi for the 12 days I'm here each year. You can feel the human heartbeat of Morocco at Fes.

Joel Davis is a traveller, DJ and writer. He is also a member of the team at Sounds True Records in Colorado.