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The project to organize a Festival of sacred music at El-Gourna is based on a simple point of view. These mystical and musical practices enclose and carry the popular enthusiasm. They are guarants of the cohesion and the perenniality of the Egyptian community. For the Egyptian society, they are the occasion to affirm its unity and its optimism. It is this dimension that seems to give to our Festival its true legitimacy. The various kinds of Egyptian traditional music are transmitted orally. In this respect, the village of Gourna is exemplary. Here, the rhythms and the melodies are preserved in the memory, the gestures and the bodies of its inhabitants. The forms and repertoires are a preserved and living tradition. They express the desires and the collective imaginary, punctuate the individual and social life, accompain celebrations, rituals. Inscribed on a daily basis in these popular traditions, in the proximity of a place as rich in archeological sites as the Theban necropolis, as well as in relationship to a contemporary architecture project as internationally known as the New Gourna, conceived by Hassan Fathy, the village generates interactions that reveal the fascinating problematic of a micro-society at the crossing of traditional and contemporary values. Obviously, Gourna appears to be the designated place to house the Upper-Egypt Festival of Traditional Music 2001 : Time and space of exception, placed under the sign of encounter and exchange of the Sacred and Popular Music from the Arab World. Rather than the affirmation of the sole Egyptian Sufi musical culture, it appears interesting to us to confront and represent the community and the variety of these musics in the whole of the Arab world. Because - within the Arab world - these sacred and popular musics compose a cultural and musical "scene" of an extraordinary vitality, the idea imposes itself to make be the theme and the principal determinator of our project. Therefore, we have taken the option to centre the totality of the program on the dynamic of the arab sacred and popular music. Thus, Gourna ,host of the 3rd Festival of Upper Egypt traditional Music in 2001 , will invite - besides the Egyptian musicians - musicians from Iraq (Maqam from Baghdad), Maghreb (Gnawa), musicians from Soudan and from Syria.

2001 Festival Program

25.03 : Hagga Sannaa, Cairo (the greatest of the very few Munshida women in Egypt) 26.03 : Al Tuyur - Gnawa, Essaouira, Morocco 27.03 : Cheikh Ahmad Al-Tûni, El Hawatka (Assyut) 28.03 : Cheikh Ahmad Barrayn, Esna 29.03 : Ismael Muhammad Ali, Khartum, Soudan 30.03 : Cheikh Amin El-Dichnawy, Dichna

Confrontation of the audiences and of the invited artists

The Festival aims at the stimulation of discoveries and encounters at different levels : the confrontation of the Egyptian audience with other musical traditions, which specificity offers links with their own ; the encounter of the visitors curious in discovering different sources of traditional Arab music, and not at the least a precious material of investigation for Arab music lovers, professionals and foreign cultural operators. The third Festival of Traditional Music in Upper Egypt will be a place of opening and dialogue. Meetings between the performing groups of musicians will be encouraged. These collaborations will lead to collaborative creations and performances. A cooperation aims to be developed in the frame of an off-line production with the participants concerned. The Festival of Traditional Music in Upper Egypt will try to establish its platform in Europe, offering scenes to perform in France and other interested countries. Preceeding each concert, the audience will again be offered an introduction to Arab music in general and an exchange with the performing musicians during a workshop under the direction of Frederic Lagrange, a French Professor in Arabic studies at the Sorbonne and specialist in Arabic music.

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Gourna on line, Association loi 1901- Non Profit Organization / 40, rue Quincampoix 75004 Paris tel 00 33 1 42 77 38 87 fax 00 33 1 42 77 59 00 email : gourna@free.fr http://gourna.free.fr