Essaouira festival gnaoua

The Essaouira Gnaoua and World Music Festival is bringing its 22nd edition, a source of great pride
for Morocco and the national cultural scene, for Essaouira and the Gnaoua, for our team and for the
partners who provide their support.
What a long road it has been! 22 years that reassure us of the pertinence and validity of our cultural
project, which represents the long struggle for recognition of an artistic minority that has long been
marginalised, and that has reached out to touch the hearts and federate visitors from around the
world. This longevity and vivacity bear witness to the solid roots of the Festival within its culture of
Gnaoua, its city of Essaouira, and in its continent, Africa.
The Festival has revealed the richness of a popular culture and has reaffirmed our African origin
and connection, through a culture with deep sub-Saharan roots. The Festival has revealed the new
face of Moroccan young people, who are free, creative, determined, and thirsting for art and for
universality. This youth that continues, year after year, to demonstrate their commitment to this
unique cultural event. The Festival has revealed the impact of culture in a project of economic and
social development, and has spurred the emergence of a destination : Essaouira, now a global label.
Over the course of editions, the Gnaoua have become virtual ambassadors for Morocco, charting off
each year to destinations like New York, Washington, Los Angeles, London, Paris, Brussels, Berlin,
Abidjan, or just a few weeks ago, Australia.
Over the years, the Essaouira Gnaoua and World Music Festival has become an odyssey that has
become reality for millions of Moroccans, an odyssey that strikes pride in their hearts.
And this edition is imperatively a special one, as it represents the ending of one cycle and the
opening of the next. Indeed, in December 2019, the UNESCO Intergovernmental Committee will
consider Morocco’s request for inclusion of Gnaoua art on the List of Oral and Intangible Cultural
Heritage of Humanity.
In just two decades, the Gnaoua have allowed us to bear witness to an incredible human and
artistic adventure, by a minority people who once played in the street and have now become an
internationally-recognised musical phenomenon. This adventure took place under the reign of
His Majesty King Mohammed VI, and Morocco will soon celebrate the twentieth anniversary of his
ascendance to the throne. A reign that has made Morocco a freer and more modern country than
ever before, a Morocco in which youth and culture are more than ever at the centre of the nation’s
concerns, a reign that prioritises the human dimension, for the edification of a Morocco of unity,
freedom, and progress