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Essaouira is known all over the world for its famous annual Gnawa and World Music Festival: a testimony of the cultural variety of Morocco. The Essaouira festival is an event that always succeeds in gathering a large passionate public.

The first edition took place in 1998, with a public of 20 000 persons; and the last edition had a larger audience of over 400 000 spectators.

Essaouira festival gathers musicians coming from different countries, with different music styles such as: pop, jazz, rock, and others; with the Gnawi style being the center of interest, since the festival itself is devoted to it.

Gnawas are descendants of slaves from black Africa, living in Morocco. They are not simply musicians, but also mâalems magicians, fortune tellers, curers, snake charmers, mediums… who believe in the existence of the spirits, and practice rites that are similar to those of African cults of possession.

Gnawas have traditions that are a mixture of their inheritance from their African ancestors, and their Arab-Berber culture: a perfect cross-pollination of African magic and Islamic rituals.

Among the well known names in the Gnawa world, there are: Maâlem Abdeslam Alikan (a founder member of the festival, and the spokesman of the Gnawas) and Maâlem Omar Hayat from Essaouira, Maâlem Hamid El Kasri from Rabat, Maâlem H’mida Boussou and Maâlem Abderrahim Benthami from Casablanca, Maâlem Abdellah Boulkhair El Gourd from Tangiers, and a lot of other names that are famous for their artistic carriers.

Besides professional artists, the festival of Essaouira is also a place of meeting for amateurs and beginners, where young talents get also to expose their art