CASABLANCA, MOROCCO — This is an overwhelmingly Muslim country, but you wouldn’t know it from the music festivals. The Casablanca Festival turns the commercial capital into an urban Woodstock, with ...

Paul Bowles over a five-month period from July to December 1959. It is a snapshot, or perhaps a time capsule, of a culture then relatively pure and unmolested by the world outside. Paul Bowles lived ...

I had the pleasure of hosting an in-studio visit by members of the group Innov Gnawa earlier this week at KCRW, and I was entranced by the powerful rhythms and chants. Gnawa is Moroccan trance music, ...

Just a short ferry ride from Spain across the Strait of Gibraltar, Morocco is richly influenced by old Andalusia, nomadic Saharan rhythms and Berber traditions. The repertoire of popular Moroccan ...

The borrowings of the Jews of the Maghreb from the Andalusian music and the qasîdah? The musical styles of the Muslim, and Jewish communities appear to be very colorful and mutually influential, ...

Music festivals can sometimes feel repetitive. If you've gone to a few over the summer, just think about how many times you've seen the same artist perform in different cities. Reinventing the wheel ...

Composer and author Paul Bowles first went to Morocco in 1931. He fell in love with the country, returning often and eventually moving to Tangier, where he lived from 1947 until his death in 1999.

Often described as calm, kind, and discreet, I have learned that our temperament quietly reveals the world that shaped us. I ...

Mizrahi music is enjoying a resurgence in Israel, with a new wave of musicians celebrating their North African and Middle Eastern roots. Atop that wave is the young singer Neta Elkayam, whose ...

The recent Friendship Fest featured some of Christian music’s top artists playing their songs for a crowd of some 85,000—mostly Muslims—in the North African nation of Morocco. While religious, ...

Said Tichiti, founder of the Budapest, Hungary-based band Chalaban, is excited to lead the group on its first tour of North America, from Montreal to New York, Miami and Los Angeles — with a stop in ...