At the Festival of World Sacred Music in Fes, artists and scholars from all over the world converge on this ancient Islamic capital to ruminate on the sacred and its relation to modernity. American gospel singers, Sufi brotherhoods, French postmodern philosophers, Jewish psychoanalysts, Lebanese Maronite Christians and Vietnamese Buddhists are just a fraction of the various groups represented at the Festival’s three events, which aim to promote intercultural dialogue and to advance an understanding of spirituality as inclusive and pluralistic. A more material objective of the Festival is to shine a spotlight on Fes, which is emerging in recent years as a tourist destination with high potential for investments and hospitality. A nation-wide movement to generate 20% of GDP from tourism by 2010 is pumping new flows of investment into a city considered by many to be a cradle of Islamic civilization in the Maghreb. Years of neglect have taken
