Finally ! After the long break from Covid-19 and a lackluster recovery in 2022, as for tourism, the 2023 cultural and musical festival season is looking promising. First the big brother, the Gnaoua Festival of World Music, which is making its long-awaited return to its stronghold of Essaouira for the 24th edition. This year’s program sounds like a return to the sources of the Festival’s success, with a skilful mix of renowned international artists, from Selah Sue to the son Marley, Ky-mani, via the immense Cuban Sonero of the Buena Vista Social Club, Eliades Ochoa, and the great Gnawa maâlems like Hamid El Kasri and Omar Hayat. Fusions and thrills guaranteed! It will also and above all be an opportunity to celebrate in due form the consecration of the inscription of the Gnaoua culture in the Intangible Cultural Heritage of UNESCO in December 2019, the fruit of the continuous passion and abnegation of the organizers and of the population of the city of Essaouira, to promote this ancestral art for 25 years. Then, Jazzablanca which celebrates its 16th edition this year and which has established itself as an unmissable event, a banner of the culture of the city of Casablanca, contributing to its influence. What certainly makes a Festival is the place that hosts it, Essaouira and Gnaoua amply testify to this. The unprecedented symbiosis that links the Jazzablanca Festival with the AnfaPark zone is the key ingredient for the success of the 2022 edition, memorable if only by the spectacle of the colorful summer sunsets, arched by the skyline of Casablanca Finance City, above the festival-goers in communion with the performances of the artists. This is what culture brings to the spectators and what makes it essential, it is an enchanted parenthesis, out of time, which simply nourishes memories, far from the realities of everyday life. Jazzablanca will keep this promise once again for this edition, which is moving upmarket in terms of organisation, with an entirely “cashless” route to streamline travel, consumption and crowd effects. The Festival Village will once again revolve around an exhaustive experience of entertainment, places to rest, eat and select designer boutiques. But it is above all the programming that makes your mouth water with a line up for music lovers, made up of Aloe Blacc, Mika, Nile Rodgers & Chic, Beth Hart to name but a few. A single watchword for this summer, get your passes! Zouhair Yata To go further