Safi – The regional Tarab Al Ala festival opens in Rabat today and runs through July 22, marking its ninth edition under the theme “Tarab Al Ala: Living and Renewed Heritage.”

The festival is organized by Morocco’s Ministry of Youth, Culture and Communication, through its Culture Department, as part of an effort to preserve this traditional repertoire while engaging younger generations. 

The official ceremony will kick off today at Mohammed V Theater, at 8 p.m. Two evening concerts will follow at Bahnini Hall.

Across those two nights, orchestras, instrumentalists and singers will represent the art’s different Moroccan schools.

The program will also honor pioneering figures who shaped Moroccan Andalusian music, as performers and as researchers. 

Tomorrow, Mohamed El Fassi Hall will host a colloquium titled “Tarab Al Ala: From Oral Memory to the Challenge of Scientific Documentation,” a session  highlighting how an art passed down by ear can be written, archived and taught.

Understanding Tarab Al Ala 

Tarab Al Ala is Morocco’s interpretation of Andalusian classical music, built around the nuba, a musical suite that unfolds across five rhythmic movements known as mizan. 

While the tradition originally comprised 24 nubas, only 11 have survived to the present day.

Tarab Al Ala is traditionally performed by a small ensemble featuring the oud and rabab, two stringed instruments, alongside the qanun zither, the kamanja violin, and the rhythmic accompaniment of the darbouka and taarija drums. 

Together, these instruments create the intricate melodies and layered rhythms that define the genre.

While the musical tradition follows the same foundations, each city has developed its own interpretation over the centuries. 

Fez, Tetouan, Sale, Rabat, Meknes, and Tangier are each home to distinct schools that preserve and pass down their own stylistic nuances, enriching Morocco’s Andalusian musical heritage.

In the 1990s the ministry’s culture department recorded the complete surviving repertoire with Maison des Cultures du Monde in Paris, using the orchestras of Fez and Tetouan under Haj Abdelkrim Raïs and Mohamed Larbi Temsamani. 

This year’s colloquium builds on that legacy by revisiting the preservation of Tarab Al Ala, bringing together scholars and practitioners to discuss how the centuries-old musical heritage can continue to thrive and be passed on to future generations.  

Once upon a time in Sale

Sale held the eighth edition last December, at the Tabriket Cultural and Artistic Complex.

On December 15, the ensemble of the National Center for Tarab Al Ala played the first night. An ensemble drawn from Rabat’s leading players took the second, and one from Salé closed the festival.

This edition paid tribute to three veterans: instrumentalists Mohamed Zaki and Abdeslam Ymlahi, and  singer Abdeslam Soufiani. 

It also carried a lecture by Abdelaziz Ben Abdeljalil on the verse forms of Andalusi music, a scholarship strand this year’s colloquium extends.

This year, the festival moves to July, taking place in the weeks leading up to Throne Day on July 30. 

While the event also highlights the documentation and preservation of Tarab Al Ala, the spotlight remains firmly on three nights of live performances celebrating Morocco’s Andalusian musical heritage.